<p>I am a Biology major on the pre-dental track at the University of Maryland, College Park.</p>
<p>I have always been a fairly good student and freshman year I maintained a GPA of around a 3.5. My science GPA was also around a 3.5, which is around the average GPA for prospective dental school students. Second semester of freshman year I got an internship working for a neuroscience lab and began working there.</p>
<p>Then sophomore year came around and I decided that I would double major in Studio Art and I enrolled in a 200 level drawing course (I took the introductory level course over the summer), which was 2.5 hours long twice a week. I was also taking difficult science courses, such as Organic Chemistry II and Genetics, both of which had roughly 3 hour long evening lab every week. I also took a colloquium course which was a 2 hour long evening course on a weekly basis. I continued to work at the neuroscience lab for 2 hours every day in the mornings, and I barely had time to even grab lunch in between work and class. On top of all of this, I pledged for Alpha Phi Omega, the national community service fraternity, so I was doing required community service work and attending fellowship events every week throughout the entire semester--not to mention all of the formal events, parties, after-parties, and weekly meetings. </p>
<p>On a very busy and overwhelming day in which I also was sick with a cold, I went into TA office hours to get a question answered for my chem lab report. When I noticed that the TA was discussing with someone else, I asked another student there to explain for me since I had to run for class soon. The person who explained their answer to me happened to have read their answer word for word and since I was in a rush and I wrote things down as they spoke, I ended up getting accused of academic dishonesty. The professor who filed the report is someone who is very strict about these things and now I am in risk of getting an XF on my transcript. I have decided to go on a hearing in order to try to get a lesser sanction, but I really don't know how things will end up. </p>
<p>On a completely different note, towards the end of the semester, my supervisor invited me to co-write a research paper to be published, since I've been working a long time on a long-term project with him. I also got voted on to be on the executive board for my fraternity next semester.</p>
<p>Even though those last two bits turned out in my favor, I still had a horrible semester. I had way too much on my plate, and my academics suffered tremendously as a result of this. I got two C's on my transcript in, you guessed it, my two most important classes, Organic Chem II and Genetics. My gpa this semester rounds up to around a 2.7. I've dedicated a lot of my time to my extracurricular activities and realized too late that I needed to focus more of that energy on my studies. </p>
<p>I'm going to have a slightly lighter schedule next semester, but it will definitely still be a very packed schedule since I'm still going to be doing essentially all of the things I did last semester. Now that I know what I've done wrong, I'm going to work on time management and work my ass off raising my gpa this semester. </p>
<p>Have I completely lost my chances of getting into dental school now? Especially with the possibility of an XF and two C's? I'm devastated and I really don't want to lose my dream of going to dental school because I am a really hard worker and dedicated in everything I do. I just didn't know how to balance everything I wanted to do and ended up with a bad result. </p>