<p>How hard would you say it is to get a 4.0 in say, civil engineering. By how hard, I mean would it be like hellish/suicidal or like hard but manageable with some room for social life. I really need a reality check on this.</p>
<p>In order to get a 4.0 in college, you must not have a life and study all day long. You can only go to class and then stay in your room all day and night and never come out for any type of fun. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>In order to get a 4.0 I agree, it's tough. But for a 3.9ish, you could definitely still have a life. Don't know about civil engineering though.</p>
<p>I think 3.9 and 4.0 makes quite a difference, because for a 4.0 you have to account for all kinds of factors like TA's grading or just chance in general, so you'd have to study like CRAZY in order to be sure to get A's in every single class, but if you're ok with a 3.9, you can have a few A- grades and still be within your target.</p>
<p>forget the 4.0 then, im not wasting 4/5 years of college life like that</p>
<p>You'll get a reality check after you take some intro classes for your major.</p>
<p>i know a 4th year ee with 3,95. and a junior standin ee with 3,85</p>
<p>no life. but you'll be in tbp! :D</p>
<p>not realistic. please remember that every + and - is weighted. </p>
<p>and seriously, i wouldn't even attempt it because what a miserable way to live.</p>
<p>yea and those two people i know are ****ing geniuses</p>
<p>I don't know anyone with a GPA higher than 3.90. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I believe grades start to dip after 1st year. First year general courses is not impossible to get As in - even if one is taking ~8 classes a quarter.</p>
<p>Impressive, but not impossible. I'd say it's totally possible all of these classes at the same time and still get an As in them:</p>
<p>Physics 4AL
Math 31A / 31B/ 32A / 33B
Physics 1A / 1B
Chem 20A, Chem 20B, Chem 20L
PIC 10, any researched GE
English Composition 2, 3</p>
<p>Most engineering freshman will take these courses the first two or three quarters. So a freshman engineering GPA > 3.0 is about right.</p>
<p>When one gets into his/her concentration classes, GPA drops.</p>
<p>its pretty possible to get a 3.9 to a 4.0 and still have a life. Then again im not in engineering so that may be a completely different beast. but in prehealth, it is more than possible to get a very high gpa and still party tons.</p>
<p>well if you do strive for a 4.0, you probably won't have a life but you can sing that one song from karate kid.. "you're the best around...nothings ever gonna bring you down..you're the best around..." lol</p>
<p>i'll take the 3.66 + ECs + happy life versus a 4.0 and miserable life, anyday.</p>
<p>flopsy - frank kuo</p>
<p>4.0 is possible if ur humanities, i know many friends at other comparable schools who have it and deff have a life. Engineering? Not so</p>
<p>I know Frank Kuo, but never knew his actual GPA. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>its just a rumor...</p>
<p>btw havent figured out who you are yet. are you in tbp?</p>
<p>I don't know anything about engineering. However, I would like to say that you can be a South campus major, get a 4.0, and still have somewhat of a social life. I'm a graduating senior with a 4.0 from UCLA, studying neuroscience and psychology. I transferred to UCLA from a ccc so I've only been here 2 years, but I got A+s in most of my classes. So you can do it but it requires a lot of discipline. Here's my advice for getting a 4.0 without totally giving up on a social life:</p>
<p>-Study for 3 to 5 hours every single day after class. Never proscrastinate. Never cram.</p>
<p>-Make a very detailed planning of what you have to do every week in every class, and stick to it. If you fail to finish your planned amount of work one day, don't beat yourself up and catch up the next day.</p>
<p>-Never miss a class under any circumstance (try to still go to class even if you're sick/hungover). Pay very close attention in class, and take thorough notes, even if you feel the prof is just lecturing from the book, or going over the powepoint slides. Disclaimer: I know a lot of people disagree with me on that one, but the time you spend paying attention in class in crucial, in my opinion. Now this might not apply to every class, but for subjects that require you to memorize tons of information (like most life science courses), you neeed 3 exposures to the material in order to maximize your memorization. The first should be in class, the second one should be after class, ideally the same night (by reviewing your notes), the third one the day before the test. </p>
<p>-If there's anything you don't understand, ask for a clarification right away. Don't be afraid to ask questions during lectures. The thing that profs want most is for you to understand. Besides, realize that you're doing everybody a favor by asking the prof to reformulate/give another example, because if you thought something wasn't clear, chances are many people in the class felt the same way, but they were too shy to raise their hands. (Of course, you should do that only when the situation calls for it. I'm not saying you should interrupt class every 2 seconds with pointless questions.)</p>
<p>-Never, under any circumstance, go to a test if there's anything you're not 100% sure you understand inside and out. Try to figure everything out with your notes and textbook. If you still don't understand, ask a classmate to explain it to you. If it's still not clear, go to office hours and discuss it with the professor. By the way I don't recommend asking TAs about very specific points. Most of them specialize in a very narrow topic in grad school, and outside of that area, they usually don't know much more than you do. </p>
<p>-Try to figure out exactly how your grade is going to be computed and what kind of tests you're gonna have to take (that information is usually in the syllabus, and sometimes discussed during the first day of class) and study accordingly. For instance, the type and amount of studying you're going to invest is going to be very different depending on whether the next test you're taking is going to be a set of problems, a short-answer type of test, a long answer/essay type of exam, or a multiple choice quizz. Each type of test requires a different studying strategy and what's crucial is to study efficiently. Some people spend countless hours studying with an inappropriate strategy, and they become very frustrated when they realize their grade is not proportional to the time they invested. This is very common and very unfortunate. You wanna make sure you spend time planning your studying, setting priorities, and understanding exactly what is expected from you. </p>
<p>-Now if you do all of the above, you'll realize you have some free time on the weekends to hang out or do whatever. Of course, you will have to turn down a number of invitations, but it's still possible to party like a rock star every other weekend. Even if you study all Friday night and Saturday afternoon, you still have Saturday night to get wasted and all of Sunday to overcome your hangover ;) </p>
<p>Anyhoo, I'm not saying anyone should do that, or that it will work out for everybody. I just wanted to give some tips on how to get a 4.0 (at UCLA, in a life science major) and still have fun once in a while, by describing what worked for me. But that said, having a 4.0 is almost completely useless. I know a lot a people with 3.6's who either got great jobs, or got into top graduate programs. I think in my case, though, my 4.0 might have helped me, because I got, among others, into my first choice graduate programs (UCLA Neuroscience PhD) despite mediocre scores on the GRE. So I think my poor performance on the GRE was somehow "counterbalanced" by the wow factor of my GPA. But other than that, the consensus is that there's no point at all in maintaining a 4.0.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies everyone. One thing I definitely plan on doing is good time management and no procrastination.</p>
<p>Btw, wut would be a good GPA to get into good grad schools like Berkeley and Stanford?</p>
<p>You should search the graduate forum here. There are plenty of threads on this topic. But to make a long story short, it seems that as long as you have a 3.5 or above, it doesn't really matter what your GPA is. What matters most is your research experience, letters of recommendation, and personal statement. There is some debate about how much the GRE matters, however.</p>