I attribute this grade not on my ability to succeed if I put the effort into CS, but rather because of some foolish things I’ve done that ended up negatively impacting my grade. At the beginning of the semester, I neglected 3 labs, and so received zeros on those 3 and there are 2 labs in which I did complete but only got half the credit because I mistakenly submitted empty Xcode files (I DID have them completed, but these errors happened 2 times because I submitted the incorrect files, by mistake). On Projects 1-4, I received grades in the A to mid/high B range, but on Project 5 I didn’t get started early enough because at the time I was concentrating a lot on Physics 140, but I do believe that if I would’ve started early enough I would’ve done better. My project grade was between 40-50%. Midterm : 73%; Final: 83%. Actually, even though I received a B- in this class, I mostly worked on projects on weekends and sometimes but not that frequently during weekdays, because weekdays I would be focusing on my other courses, Physics 140 in particular. So EECS 280 was not very time consuming, but I did not put enough time into it. Based on this info and grade, what is advice you guys can give me on what a semester of EECS 281 would look for me?
First off, welcome to College Confidential!
That midterm and final grade is pretty good, as are your first 4 project grades. You have aptitude for CS. Spend a lot of time on 281. Try to stay a little ahead of the course material (read up on topics before class). Get started on projects the day they come out. Good luck!
A lot of people take 281 and 370 together - I do not recommend doing that (unless you are like a genius or top decile of the class). Do not rush your way through the CS curriculum. Try to have the rest of your courseload be light. 280 and 281 present very important core topics in CS that future courses build upon, and they make up a lot of interview questions for software development internships (I was asked about hash trees, optimization, picking the optimal data structure, etc.).