<p>I find that the less I go to class, the BETTER my grades are. Maybe that is just because all of my professors last semester were awful, but I went from attending EVERY one of my classes to only going in for my mandatory labs for the last month -- and my grades improved from mid-90's to 98-100's. How about you?</p>
<p>Yeah umm... that's generally not a good rule to go by.</p>
<p>for the classes i never went to...i had A-'s in all three. in the classes i DID go to, i had a B+ and B. but the way i see it..i went those classes because they were hard, so it makes sense that i got lower grades in them, not because of any attendance issue</p>
<p>Generally I get more information from a teacher than a textbook.
Not necessary in the sense of 'facts', but a teacher can explain concepts so much better, put them in perspective, and illustrate them with examples.
(But then again, I'm one of those crazy double majors in the sciences and can't afford to skip classes..)</p>
<p>I NEED to go to class to do well.</p>
<p>I have shown up to all of my classes every day (if I'm paying for it I may as well get my money's worth), but ditched the Monday and Tuesday befor Thanksgiving break (so I could leave for home on friday). I am very satisfied with my grades.</p>
<p>I'm not a current student, but I remember this correlation from when I was in college (and law school). There were certain teachers who were not very good. They couldn't explain things clearly and managed to confuse everyone. I found that if I skipped their classes and/or attended but basically read the text in class and ignored the teacher (some teachers lowered your grade if you didn't attend), I did better. Also, there were some classes where the teacher couldn't control some of the blowhard students who had to talk the entire time and say nothing - those classes weren't worth attending either. I found that it was always worth attending the class of a good teacher. FWIW, I did more "ignoring the teacher" than skipping class - you never know when they're going to tell you what's on the final or decide to take class attendance into account.</p>
<p>At my school attendance is huge and you only get 2 absences per class. the 3rd absence and every one after that lowers your grade by a full letter, so missing class is not really an option in my world. My school isn't even really small, we just have small class sizes with teachers that keep track of attendance.</p>
<p>Given that one of my classes, half the exam information was taken from lecture, another was a foreign language, one was a seminar, and another was entirely based on lectures, going to class was farely important.</p>
<p>For the most part my professors were pretty damn good last semester. Haven't ran into a crap professor yet, but back in high school, I would just completely ignore my Calculus teacher and work ahead on the next day's assignment once I realized that she was making up work and just putting down the right answer when explaining the difficult problems.</p>
<p>I don't think I'd ever skip a class, because there might be something important that comes up during it. But if nothing of value is being done, I'll work ony my website or watch a previous day's NBA game on league pass.</p>
<p>I had about an 85% overall attendance, and I got a 3.4. I feel that going to class more could have improved my grades.</p>
<p>with class size of only about 20, not going to class hurts my grades significantly esp if the teacher sees i'm not there</p>
<p>So far I have had one class every semester that I skipped most of the time unless I had an assignment to turn in. All of those were required classes that were very easy and that I didn't care about a lot. But I usually try to pick classes with professors who are good teachers, which makes class a lot more pleasant.</p>
<p>I always go to classes that are small or have homeworks due. Depending on the class I always try to go as much as possible unless the professor is terrible (genetics). In that case, I always try to read the sections of the book that correlate with the lecture before class and if there is anything I don't get then I will show up to class. I never missed Orgo, but that was because the professor was great and I knew I was going to learn something if I went to class and paid attention. Showing up is worthwhile for the sake of monitoring class progress.</p>
<p>This semester was probably my best, but there was no real correlation between grades and attendance. I pulled B+'s and A-'s in classes I thought were going to be definite A's and A's in classes I thought for sure I was going to get B's in. I guess it depends on how much you care about the class around finals.</p>
<p>I figure I'm tossing out thousands of dollars to attend these classes, I might as well show up. The only times I miss class is if I'm ill.</p>
<p>Depends on how large the class is, discussion/lecture based, etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I figure I'm tossing out thousands of dollars to attend these classes, I might as well show up. The only times I miss class is if I'm ill.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Intro to Econ taught me that the tuition you paid for the semester is already a sunk cost.</p>
<p>Therefore, perform the cost/benefit analysis without that in the equation. For my econ class, I realized that the time could be better spent reading the book. </p>
<p>Economics told me not to attend economics class.</p>
<p>I go by the philosophy of "Any non-engineering class is easy."</p>
<p>Therefore I tend to miss lectures for those classes. </p>
<p>It's not my fault that the classes are so easy that I receive A's even if I don't show up to a class.</p>
<p>Any correlation between not attending class/lectures probably does not imply causation.</p>
<p>You're probably getting better grades in the classes you don't go to because you selectively choose which classes not to go to. Obviously, you would skip the easy classes and for sure attend the classes you're struggling in, meaning that the action of skipping lectures doesn't really have a big infleunce in the outcome. </p>
<p>If I choose to skip multiple math lectures because I'm good at math, I will still get an A. If I choose to go to chem because I suck at chem, I will probably still get a B. That doesn't mean that if I had skipped chem classes I would have gotten an A.</p>
<p>Also, tuition might be a sunk cost, but generally going to lectures is an efficient method of learning the material. You have to compare it to the costs of what learning the material on your own would be (generally they are higher unless your professors suck).</p>
<p>Any negative correlation between attending class/lectures and grades probably does not imply causation.</p>
<p>You're probably getting better grades in the classes you don't go to because you selectively choose which classes not to go to. Obviously, you would skip the easy classes and for sure attend the classes you're struggling in, meaning that the action of skipping lectures doesn't really have a big infleunce in the outcome. </p>
<p>If I choose to skip multiple math lectures because I'm good at math, I will still get an A. If I choose to go to chem because I suck at chem, I will probably still get a B. That doesn't mean that if I had skipped chem classes I would have gotten an A.</p>
<p>Also, tuition might be a sunk cost, but generally going to lectures is an efficient method of learning the material. You have to compare it to the costs of what learning the material on your own would be (generally they are higher unless your professors suck).</p>
<p>I missed almost half of the lectures for Probability and still got an A. I think if you get the notes from a friend, you should be fine.</p>