<p>Hi i am a student at SFSU and i am taking 16 units all payed by the SFSU grant and pell grant. if i can drop a class this late in the semester, will this affect the FINANCIAL AID?
I am considering dropping because i realized that one of my class has put all the major assignments to the end of the semester, presentation, term paper, and a midterm. this will undoubtly become as a conflict with my 4 other classes, 2 of which i am uncertain if i will get a good grade out of. because i will have term paper, and finals to study for the other classes as well. the problem with that class is for the majority of the semester, is that he assigned articles and discussion every class. which we really did nothing but discuss the articles for the majority of the semester, also because of this most of the class dint even show up majority of the semester.</p>
<p>i also am aware that the school needs a serious and compelling reason to drop and 3 signatures for withdraw: one from instructor, one from department head, which ironically is also the instructor and 1 from the dean of the school? is it possible to drop like this?
and i know its A W on the record, this is graduation requirment course not part of my major, im certain and can take another class in place of this one?</p>
<p>im sorry, i dont know how to delete this question.i wanto move this into dropping classes section of the forums.</p>
<p>It belongs here in the financial aid section. All the time students come here who lose financial aid and owe tuition because of dropping classes and not taking enough units to qualify. So it is best to be very sure.</p>
<p>You are probably okay, but the SFSU website advises:</p>
<p>All financial aid recipients should speak to a financial aid counselor to discuss the impact of any proposed changes in enrollment such as dropping a course, repeating a course, or withdrawing from the University. Any of these changes may affect his/her satisfactory academic progress and future eligibility for financial aid.</p>
<p>[Financial</a> Aid - at San Francisco State University](<a href=“Office of Student Financial Aid | Office of Student Financial Aid”>Office of Student Financial Aid | Office of Student Financial Aid)</p>
<p>??</p>
<p>Just because the due dates are at the end of the semester doesn’t mean that you have to wait to do them at the last minute. Get them done now so they won’t interfere with your other classes.</p>
<p>You need to learn to budget your time. This won’t be the last time that you have semester-end deadlines. When you’re in upper division courses, you may find that all of your classes have projects or whatever due at semester end. Work ahead, get things done early.</p>
<p>The proper place to bring this up is with the FA office at school.</p>
<p>You do not understand the class im taking which is IR 326, SOUTH AND SE asian foreign relations.
3/4 of the semester, is all we did was read 20-60 pg articles of theoretical issues of foreign relations, also a book which we had to finish in 2 sessions. all we did was discuss the readings the next session of the assigned readings. which most of the classmates i talked to admitted to not even reading the 2 books and the majority of the articles, because of the length and complexity of them. it also put some people to sleep because the class is so “Dry” AND boring. also the majority of the class dint bother coming to class, during the semester, they only showed up at the review day last week it was the way the course was structured. He assigned we had to do presentation and a 5k word term paper, based on very obscure broad theoretical questions. He did not give a very clear format as to how to approach the papers.
this last 1/4 of the semester which is a little more than a month left was for the presentations. we were expected to memorized all the authors, which was 20+ and expect to know what they wrote for the midterm yesterday.
Im not the only one in the class that felt this way. some people have dropped in the past semester because they couldnt figure out the format of his essay’s.</p>
<p>for the 2 classes, which is physics 2nd semester, which the test was too easy to pass and too easy to fail, it was structured with 9 questions, 8 are multiple choices 1 was short answer, multiple choices made 2nd guessing happen too much so i dint so well, despite having a cheat sheet, other people had the same issue.</p>
<p>the other class that was endagered of not passing was, animal physiology, the problem with this class was the teacher, was trying a new approach to the class by have group discussions and activities, which were ineffective in learning because the majority of the time wasnt spent learning about the details of physiology, even someone in the class commented a similar study was done at UC berkely and she said that mode of teaching was ineffective, which i am inclined to agree. Also the teacher was “absent” for 1/3 of the semester, he had phd candidates and graduates to teach parts of the physiology chapters instead. and the test, he even admitted he made it so long that the majority of the class dint even finish, thus some of us got low scores, even when he adjusted them to a lower setpoint of maximum points.
since i am new to the college, i dint not anticipate the registration system to be so primitive, the way it was structured dint allow you to register for all classes all in 1 day. dint allow time to even research the classes, i also chose class that i probably dint need as well, the system also rushed us to choose classes quickly because it gave a short time limit to do so.</p>
<p>I expect that dropping a class, even if you are able to do so without affecting your GPA, will affect your aid, if you drop below 12 credits.</p>
<p>i currently have 16 units, and that course i was babbling about is, 4 units. since the school makes it difficult to drop, needs a withdraw form, 3 signatures, 1 from instructor, 1 from department head, he is also the instructor, 1 from the dean? how would this affect the financial aid if i drop to 12 units?
i am hesitant to email the teacher about my situation, because its so late in the semester, he already gave out presentation dates weeks ago, he already expects so much from us already. should i talk to a academic advisor before attempting to drop.
since the school needs some compelling reason, would this be good enough:
“i want to drop the class because i cannot figure out your term paper you want us to do, and also researching and doing this paper will take time away from studying for the other class”
i am only dropping 1 CLASS.</p>
<p>i</p>
<p>Ignoring the whole wall of text aspect to the posts…
Is there a reason you can’t TALK to your instructor? Do students talk to teachers any more?</p>
<p>the problem is that, it so late in the semester, and he already set up presentation dates for each of the class students, starting from mw classes, its all presentation days til the end of the semester, 1-2 people will go each day. and the term paper as well. i just want to confirm financial aid eligibility til i go hastily and impulsive dropping classes. because of the withdrawal policy of the sfsu, he might just assume im failing and give me and unauthorized withdraw.</p>
<p>Isn’t 12 credits (units) considered full time in Calif publics? If so, there shouldn’t be a change in aid.</p>
<p>i know that, the problem, is will the teacher let me drop the class this late in the semester, since he already set up our presentation date and our final paper,</p>
<p>note: many people in the class haven’t even begun their papers, because the research topics is so broad. choose a country, based on theoretical concepts of its foreign policy and not the policy itself. you can imagine these research sources are hard to find. even though he asked what topic we would do, in mid october, im finding increasingly difficult to find anything thats useful as research sources, due to the vague nature of how he wants us to do the paper and presentation. not only the sources have to be a wrong hypothesis, meaning a pessimistic outcome of a country’s foreign policy, and a right hypothesis, which is a optomistic outcome of the foreign policy. The paper, i feel is like a very biased and not a objective paper/</p>
<p>IMHO, I think you realized too late that this class is a lot of work and are now afraid that you can’t handle it. </p>
<p>Well, how do you know this if you haven’t started the presentations/papers yet? If you have another month, there’s still time. You can buckle down and do it if you just give yourself the chance. Starting is the hardest yet most important part. You never know unless you try, right? You might surprise yourself. </p>
<p>I get you because I have a class structured similarly. We read scholarly articles for the first 2 months and have 2 papers and a project due the last month. However, our papers are about the articles we read, so as long as one worked hard and did all of the reading, it’s not too hard to do. Is that maybe what your class is like? Can you use all the articles you read to write your papers? (did you read them?) </p>
<p>If you can drop and if you do, take this as a friendly lesson. A lot of classes will be like this, especially theoretically-based ones. </p>
<p>If you can’t drop, then just step it up and get your work done. Try your best to pass. Talk with your classmates and try and set up strategies and study sessions together. You can still do it; it’s not too late.</p>
<p>Oh no,he specifically stated that we cant use the articles he assigned, to do our paper, eventhough they are great source. they are off limits.
our term paper is a theoretical analysis of foreign policy, basically its abstract. and we have to go and find scholarly articles of someone having a pessimistic view of the policy, and another author who has an optomistic view of the policy, you see this is not of the policy itself. I initially had a topic before, but have to switch topic, which already made me behind. the first the topic was between 2 different countries, which i found to be incredibly difficult to find papers on, most of the papers i found were basically saying what happened. so i switched topics. i chose this class out of impulse, because the schools registration system forced me to choose classes quickly or others may close.</p>
<p>And for my clasmates, they are also very concerned about his class. there is only sevral people, who are IR majors and only 2 of them are even invested his class.the people I talked to have barely begun to research his paper, despite him asking us several times in october how the research is going. Some of them cant figure out what he wants. Some of them like me switched topics, which means we have to restart our research. the paper has to be 4750 words, and content has to be the 2 hypothesis i mentioned, and supporting data. i found this class very boring as did the majority of the class, because most of them dint even show up for the majority of the semester.
i did find the class interesting, but amount of time required to do the paper near the end will undoubtly affect my other finals.</p>
<p>the grade for the IR 326, the one im dropping is uncertain, because all the grading will be based on midterm,term paper,presentation. grading percentage for class is: Grading: midterm exam 30%, presentation 20%, term paper 40%, class participation 10%. so there is no way to judge how you will do in the class till the very end of the semester. as i mentioned before, 3/4 of the semester was doing nothing, basically.</p>
<p>i resolved the issue of my question.</p>