<p>I’m the first in my family to go to college, so I’m really don’t know what to expect…</p>
<p>How hard are the classes at Davis? If you work hard, are A’s possible? Also, is it difficult to graduate in 4 years? When do you start registering for classes?</p>
<p>If it helps, if I go, I’m going in as an English major.</p>
<p>Any advice would be great! :]</p>
<p>Davis requires 39 units per year be completed in total. (This can include summer school) so graduating in 4 years is expected. As to class difficulty it would be impossible for any of us to answer. We have no way of knowing how difficult your high school experience was. My daughter has found that by going to her professors for help and keeping ahead of her work she is quite capable of earning top grades. It is a matter of being organized and managing your time well. Take advantage of tutoring, group study, and professor office hours and you will be fine. Don't let the fun and extra cirriculars take precedence over your studies and you will do fine.</p>
<p>collegemom, what's your daughter's major?</p>
<p>I can speak on behalf of the bio/chem department here. For the most part keeping up with lectures and studying to the point of understanding all the material well will at least earn you a B. It's hard to be on top of your work and get lower than that. To get an A, though, will require strong mastery of the material as is expected. By strong mastery I mean knowing lecture notes back and front, grasping all the topics in the book, perhaps going to office hours, as well as doing practice tests and a lot of practice problems. Students here are really smart and underrated as far as intelligence goes. I've only earned a few A's in my core science classes and only did so when I knew I had the material down better than anyone else. You need to be freaking solid to get an A for the most part and even a B in some classes. But once you earn that grade that you know you worked hard for and deserved it feels great, you aren't spoon fed anything here..</p>
<p>The average graduation rate for the school is something like 4.2 years. For social science majors, 4 years shouldn't be a problem.</p>
<p>For science and engineering majors, it usually takes about 4 year and 1 quarter up to 4 year and 2 quarters since their class workload is more time consuming. So generally they need to take 1 less class per quarter compared to others in order to handle the load.</p>
<p>In college, you shouldn't go by high school gpa stardards anymore. The average overall schoolwide gpa of Davis undergrad students is 2.9, if that should tell you something. I've always felt high school was a joke. Everyone and their momma are able to get ridiculously high gpa's, it's not even funny. In college, people who are able to really maintain high gpa's are really few and far in between, especially for hardcore science majors. By the way, I'm not a science major.</p>
<p>Generally, if you can make a 3.5 gpa at the university level, then you're considered to be on the upper tier of skill level among your peers.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that it's not difficult to get As if you're willing to work for them. Personally I think it's easier to do in science majors because the grading is less subjective, so you'll always know exactly what the graders are looking for.</p>
<p>How hard is it? Well I got a 3.88 in my physics minor without going to more than a handful of lectures. Look at the syllabus at the beginning of the quarter, and find out what you're graded on. If you're graded on attendance, go to all your classes. If you have graded homework, make sure you turn it all in. Find out what's going to be on the test. If the teacher doesn't tell you, ask him. If he still doesn't tell you, ask people who have taken his classes before. Either way you should have a good idea by the time you get to the final.</p>
<p>If you don't know what's going on, use your TA's office hours! They're there for a reason! I took Quantum Mechanics without any of the pre-req classes, and despite having no idea what was going on 90% of the time, I got an A. How? I went to my TA's office hours. Consequently I got between 90-100% on my homework every time. In a class where the mean was around 50%, this was huge.</p>
<p>Now don't get me wrong when I said I don't go to lectures. I usually don't (unless the teacher really deviates from the book or attendance is graded), but I still work hard for my grades. The question isn't "Can you get As at Davis?" Yes, you can. The real question is "Are you willing to put in the work necessary to get As at Davis?"</p>
<p>wow, all these answers have been great!! thanks so much everyone... </p>
<p>if anyone has more input, that would be great too! :]</p>