<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I'm a class of 2011 guaranteed transfer to the ILR school, and I'm spending my freshman year at beautiful UC Santa Barbara.</p>
<p>My question is, what does a single B- mean in the GT process? I was speaking to a fellow GT prospect the other night and he told me that I might was well kiss my chances goodbye. My first quarter I attained an A in introductory chemistry and its lab (something I'm proud of), an A- in a law and society course, and a B- in a fringe music class called "World Music."</p>
<p>World music is one of the few courses offered by the music department available to non-music majors. That B- wasn't even due to real academic circumstances - in the class, there are a certain number of required "ethnic" concerts that must be attended, each with a hefty ticket price. Furthermore, a lot of these concerts were very much off-campus, far enough that they are outside bus routes and reasonable walking/biking distance. For an unconnected, dorm-living first year as myself, it was difficult to make the weekday night trips to these events. I simply chose not to go because I believed they were an unfair imposition on students trying to just take a class. The penalty for missing these events is a docking of the final letter grade - for each concert missed, you get docked a full increment (A to A-, A- to B+), etc. I missed three of these concerts and consequently my A- became a B-.</p>
<p>The question is, what exactly should I do? Should I send a letter of explanation including parts of the syllabus and the above stated dilemma? Or should I just give up altogether and spend the rest of my college years surfing?</p>