<p>The question is kind of self-explanatory. Although I was admitted, I didn't get CHP. I noticed on their website that I could still apply after a quarter of having a GPA of 3.5+ which is something I definitely want to work for. </p>
<p>My question is: how hard is it to get a 3.5+?
Other questions that would be great if someone could answer are</p>
<p>1) How much does it cost/what exactly do you do at SPOP?
2) Do you use those "Clicker" things (those remotes that you answer questions from lol not too familiar about these)?
3) Is there internet connection (Wi-Fi) in the library?</p>
<p>Anything else that is interesting about UCI I would love to hear!
Thanks</p>
<p>GPA depends on major. It should be difficult if you are into engineering and computer science. The rest shouldn’t be too hard to get a 3.5+ gpa.</p>
<p>The use of clickers varies from class to class. Some classes use them and some don’t.</p>
<p>Yes. There is WiFi at the library. There is wifi almost everywhere on campus.</p>
<p>If you’re in bio, to maintain a 3.5 you have to be around top 50-100% of your class consistently. (Top 50% of class gets B’s, top 17% get A’s, 1 A + 1 B = 3.5). That’s about how hard it is… You have to be smarter than half the bio majors at UCI.</p>
<p>^
Bio is not so bad as everyone thinks. I recommend taking large classes. I find them a lot easier to get good grades than smaller classes. A 400 classes can have like 70-80 A’s while a class of 100 will have like 20. Same percentage but higher number of A’s in large classes. The curves are also much better in larger classes too (more weaker students). It makes a difference to me.</p>
<p>It didn’t seem hard my first quarter (got a 3.9)…but now I’m seriously struggling with only 18 units 2nd quarter. -___- Don’t take your first quarter for granted. Practice good study habits and time management. Also for CHP, you’re supposed to apply after your sophomore year I think.</p>
<p>Sorry i don’t remember exactly what the cost of spop was. I know I paid around $80 or something though. Don’t buy their bed sheets and stuff. You probably won’t be needing it anyway. At SPOP, you meet a bunch of incoming students and older students who act as your “hosts” sort of. You play games that last all night into the early morning. There’s a few boring seminars that no one cares about (lol. I was honestly too sleepy the second day to even remember what was being said). You can tour the campus if you haven’t done so already. You will also sign up for classes which is the most important part. Try to get an earlier date or else you might not be taking writing (if that’s something you want to take I mean…). SPOP is like a transition into actually going to school. I think I was more homesick during spop than I was the first week of school. </p>
<p>Clickers are no big deal. Maybe you’ve seen them in HS in one form or another. They look like this:
<a href=“Classroom Technologies – Office of Information Technology @ UCI”>Classroom Technologies – Office of Information Technology @ UCI;
There’s a button corresponding to each choice of a M/C question (or T/F). The questions will be projected on the screen during lectures. You get 30sec-1min to answer a question. You don’t have to get them right usually, you just have to click to get participation points. </p>
<p>There is wi-fi at the libraries (however wi-fi at the Science Library seems to check out randomly every now and then). Generally, there seems to be wi-fi around campus. There is NO wi-fi at Middle Earth (and Mesa when I lived there for SPOP. Maybe Mesa has wi-fi now). </p>
<p>Wow thanks for all of the feedback, this is really going to help me.</p>
<p>iTransfer- I’m really glad to hear that there is Wi-Fi almost everywhere on campus! I was worried about having to buy one of those USB cards with internet on them. Also, thanks for the recommendation about taking large classes. I am going to major in biosci so hopefully I can maintain a high GPA that way.</p>
<p>Zairair- lol I’m planning to major in Biological Sciences so I’m really hoping that it’s not too bad, but I will definitely keep what you said in mind. No pain in studying harder for those hard classes</p>
<p>oceanpartier- Thanks so much for your comprehensive response. I’m planning to commute so hopefully less partying and more studying will help me get a high GPA. I’m not totally sure about the CHP (the website had this app that had “freshman” as one of the options but like I said, idk)</p>
<p>SPOP sounds pretty cool! I have yet to visit the campus; I’ve just been looking at those virtual online tours hahaha. What you said about the clickers makes me feel a lot better. I imagined taking quizzes with these things for actual points and I was a bit worried. I figure this would be an easier way to get participation/figure out who actually came to class!</p>
<p>I seriously just talked to my bio counselor today at UCI, and she said that the average GPA for the first quarter of freshman bio majors was 2.4</p>
<p>The classes are just hard–simple as that. They know this, and if you look closely at a typical freshman schedule, they purposely do not put in a core bio class for spring quarter-because they want you to take GE’s to raise your GPA. (This is straight from her). </p>
<p>For others out there,
my friend, who is an aerospace engineer, also met with his counselor recently and was told that the avg gpa for Engineers was about 2.6-2.8</p>
<p>The GPA is low because of the bell curve (the shape looks like a bell with the middle being the highest value). I suggest you get familiar with it before you enter the University of California for science majors. It really helps out to know what a standard deviation and mean are.</p>
<p>@KMA that may be true for the first quarter, but the avg overall GPA for a bio major is 2.7. It’s just hard to adjust to adjust to the transition from HS to college, my lowest GPA was admittedly my freshman year.</p>
In my opinion, the real problem is that HS are just really unprepared for what it takes to do well in college. I remember pre UCI thinking “Oh ****, classes and students in college are going to get real. I can’t screw around.”
What I found was that 18 year old kids graduating HS aren’t that different from 18 year old kids entering college (in fact, they are quite the same!). They going to writing class without doing the reading. They go to chem discussion when they haven’t done the homework. They go to physics tutoring with their laptop so the TA can answer their HW problems. /rant</p>
<p>Some schools (like medical school, MIT, etc) put a gatekeeper early on. If you make it past admissions at MIT/medical school, you know you can handle the coursework (and the retention rate shows this).
Other schools (like Reed College in Portland, OR) basically let anyone in. But they weed them out via a first year writing, junior advancement exam, and senior thesis. So only 40% of students entering Reed would graduate. But 80% of those graduating would get PhDs. (I think Purdue’s Engr program is also like this).</p>
<p>The point is, UCI is a lot more like Reed than MIT in my opinion. They let students in knowing that many will not make it as a bio major/engineer. </p>
<p>
That doesn’t make any sense. For it to be a bell curve, there would have to be a 4.0 student for every 2.4. For most classes, the mean grades are not artificially low.
Most professors have an idea of what percent grade = what letter grade = how much you learned. (I don’t know if the shape should necessarily be a bell curve, college students are not a random population). But anyway, they get by with the law of large numbers. </p>
<p>When everyone did really well (and the test were accurate, not loaded with softballs), I’ve also seen professors adjust the curve accordingly. I’ve been in classes where the professor couldn’t give any Ds or Fs because no one did that poorly. And in classes where no one gets an A. </p>
<p>
This doesn’t apply to REALLY small classes (>50). Professors there tend to grade on a straight(er) scale. But if you’re bio sci/engr, you won’t see too many of these classes. you might get this in certain majors for all your upper div classes (math, ESS, physics will all be like this.)</p>
<p>flemmyd my man, I know it’s Thursday night and I hope you are not that drunk but bell curves are not straight lines. They are curves, specifically with the highest distribution about the mean (C/B) and the lowest distribution about the extremes (A/D/F). Bell curves do not produce “1:1” ratios of 4.0 to 2.4, I don’t even know how you got this number which has no statistical basis whatsoever… There is however a ratio of between 1:6 and 1:5 A’s to B+C+D+F’s in bio 93 if that’s what you meant…</p>
<p>Furthermore please do not post a rebuttal to me if you don’t read the whole thread. We were clearly talking about bio classes… and I was specifically talking about a typical freshman’s first quarter as a bio major. You must not be familiar with the rules of the School of Biological Sciences. There is a requirement that bio majors in bio 93 and chem1a are graded based on a rough 17%A-33%B-33%C-10%D-7%F bell shaped curve. </p>
<p>Sure your arguments may seem great, but you state your argument as a fact when it is false.</p>
<p>To add some insult to injury, there has not been a case in Odowd’s or Busciglio’s in 4 years (possibly more) that they have “adjusted” a curve for bio 93.</p>
<p>Lastly, what I type, makes sense. Nice try though. Lol at thinking that professors just have this “inert sense” to grade students such that it makes the average first quarter GPA is around 2.4 or around 2.6 or 2.8. No dude, most of them just rank them amongst each other. It may effect 1 grade, but not a that of multiple classes.</p>
yeah, i pulled that number out my butt. the point im trying to make is that there is plenty of room at the top for anyone who is willing to work and get a good GPA. </p>
<p>It just annoys me when someone asks how hard it is to do well and people point to the bell curve. As if they would know the material well enough for an A or B, but because of the bell, its a C.
If you said something like “I spend 10 hours studying to ace the homework/quizes”, that might be more representative of how hard it is.
Of if you said “I ace all the homeworks and average 92% on my exams, but the curve earned me a B”, that might be helpful also. </p>
<p>
maybe for bio, but not always for chem. two points:
yes there is a rough outline for a grade distribution. Say a class (bio 93) have average grades of 58 (all out of 100) and a std of 12. maybe that fits the bell curve nicely. if one year, every bio 93 student does markedly better, (mean = 78, std 3), do you think the professor will rigidly stick to the normal bell curve?
In the 4 years Odowd or Busciglio taught bio 93, have there been any cases where the grade distribution has been markedly higher?
admittedly, ive seen the other happen - a class does poorer than normal and the professors bumps up students to fit the distribution. </p>
<ol>
<li>professors can write test having a ball park idea of what the mean/curve is going to be like. Some chem professors will give exams knowing the average grade will be a 40 and then curve along the bell. other professors will give exams knowing the average grade will be 80 and then grade on a straight scale so you can never blame the curve for doing poorly.</li>
</ol>
<p>“Other schools (like Reed College in Portland, OR) basically let anyone in. But they weed them out via a first year writing, junior advancement exam, and senior thesis. So only 40% of students entering Reed would graduate. But 80% of those graduating would get PhDs.”</p>
<p>Just to correct some numbers:</p>
<p>Last year Reed admitted 43% of applicants, 90% of freshmen returned, the six-year graduation rate was 79%, and 20% of Reed grads later earn a PhD.</p>
<p>I didn’t think the details were important to this argument. pardons for glossing over the details.</p>
<p>EDIT: and i mispoke when i said 80% went to get phds. but the relative number is fairly high.
<a href=“404 Page Not Found | NCSES | NSF”>404 Page Not Found | NCSES | NSF;
table 2: Reed college ranks 4th in the number of students who get phds in sciences based on how many people got B.A.
I don’t have any table for the social science/humanities (which i think are larger programs at Reed). </p>
<p>The point i’m trying to make is that Reed is (or was?) the type of school that didn’t post their gatekeepers in the admission room. they let kids come in and try to succeed. UCI is a bit like that, and thats why kids fail out. It’s not like getting into Stanford where just getting in means you’re more than smart enough to do well in any program.</p>
