This past fall I was a first semester Freshman at Cornell University. Prior to this my high school’s program was not very rigorous and I had graduated as valedictorian with a 4.3 gpa. I had only ever gotten 1 B in my life, in AP Calc junior year.
My first semester I originally took 16 credits, a 4 credit general chemistry, 3 credit intro to cell bio, 4 credit calculus, 3 credit writing seminar, 2 credit bio lab. The classes seemed to me about what my high school had been teaching and so I thought everything was going well, occasionally went to office hours and received good marks on all of my assignments. Then the first round of prelims came around and I discovered that the curves here were not nearly as lenient as they had been at my high school and that had been what I hadn’t accounted for. On my first midterms got a B- in chemistry, a C in calc, and a low grade in cell bio although the way the class was curved they didn’t tell you your letter grades until the very end of the semester. However I could see I was below the average and median in all of my classes. I ended up dropping the calc class as I already had the AP credit for calc and had discovered most vet schools will accept AP credit.
I started trying to study harder than I had in high school but I realized I didn’t have much prior knowledge of any of the material even though a lot of my peers this seemed to be review. My second prelims I scored around the same in chemistry and bio and for cell biology I ended up getting called down to see the academic advisor for my low grade. At this point I was only at 12 academic credits so I could not drop the class and he did not really have a lot of help to offer as I was already going to office hours and studying in groups. I felt like I understood the material but I had a hard time memorizing even the most basic of stuff. Then when finals came around I had never had to take cummulative finals at my high school and I ended up failing chemistry and biology finals. My final grades ended up as a C in chemistry, a D+ in cell biology, and a A- in my writing seminar and bio lab. For someone who had just finished an 8 class senior year and gotten all A+s in high school this was a total shock.
The cell bio class and chemistry are both pre reqs for vet school. I know that I will have to retake the cell bio class at some point in time if I want to still be a veterinarian. I am not sure if I can recover my gpa from this awful first semester or what my chances of getting into a vet school will look like now. I am also not sure how I am going to be able to do in the many bio classes I have to take in the future. I am good at evolutionary biology but have to work really hard in chemistry and biology and I still did not have good grades in them. I have wanted to be a vet for years and do not have any back up plan.