Hi all,
As first semester is winding towards finals, the most optimal GPA that I will be looking at is a 2.66, which is quite terrible. How hard will this impact my overall college GPA, because I realized what my problems are, but just too late within the semester.
- You posted this in an engineering forum, with that said you should have the ability as an engineering student to do something as simple as calculate GPA
- You don’t give enough information to make any real estimation
- A 2.66 isn’t the end up the world your first semester, but it will leave you fighting an uphill battle trying to get your GPA up to a 3.5. Assuming you make straight A’s with a few B’s you could pull your GPA up to a 3.5 by junior year so don’t stress it
Enough adults on this website make mistakes calculating GPA that I am convinced it’s not actually that intuitive.
One bad semester can be overcome if you get consistently higher grades from now on, but only you know whether that’s possible for you. 3.0+ seems to be the cutoff for a lot of engineering job listings, though I’ve seen some with no requirements, some with 2.7, some with 2.0, some with 3.5, etc.
College does not have weighted grading like high schools. So it really is pretty straightforward math, if you take the same amount of credits each semester. For example, if you could get 3.2 the next 7 semesters, GPA would be (3,2x7 +2.66) / 8 = 3.13.
The good news is that employers would look favorably on upward trend. Now that you have an idea about how classes work at your school you can plan studying better in future semesters. Also look for study groups. Best of luck!
Except students rarely take the same number of credits every semester. It is still fairly simple math. It just isn’t that simple.
Agreed… once you’ve actually gone through the semesters things will vary a bit by courseload (easily handled via simple spreadsheet.) But the OP was asking future what-if,.
Right, but why not use a method that is more accurate, like picking a hypothetical GPA you hope to achieve in the remaining semesters and using that with the remaining credits on the degree to come up with a final GPA? That’s a very easy calculation.
It could be worse. My first semester was a 1.9. I managed to retake that math class and I made the honor roll on my second semester. College is a learning curve and it’s easy to be distracted when you’re an adult with new freedom. I made it through with a master’s degree. Just stay focused and you’ll be OK.