So, I will be attending college next fall at the same college my brother attends. He showed me his intro to bio syllabus, and I am freaking out! There are two exams for the semester, and they account for 66% of the final grade! 20% is group labs where everyone gets the same grade regardless of who did more work or something like that. I know college is completely different from high school and that I’ll need to learn to handle things like this, but I’m scared I’ll mess up and fail the class. I’ll be pre med, so GPA is extremely important. I don’t know why I’m posting this because I don’t have a question or advice, but I guess it’s nice to just rant and maybe get some responses from students who have gone/are going through grading systems like this one.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
The grading you mention is pretty typical of college and beyond. It will require some major adjustments on your part.
Advice:
- Don’t get behind!
1a) Attend every lecture and every recitation. Don’t skip class, not even “just this once”.
1b) Do all class readings and homework sets before going to lecture/recitation
1c) Cramming doesn’t work. Study some every day for every class.
-
Ask for help when you need it
Join a study group, utilize tutors at your college’s academic success center, attend office hours of your TA and/or professor -
Be willing to pull your own weight and then some on the group lab reports
It’s not fair, but lots of things in life aren’t fair.
As @WayOutWestMom stated, the grading for your brother’s Bio class is pretty typical for most science based college courses. Follow her advice and you should be fine. Also be aware, labs can be just as much or more work than the associated lecture but counts for much less so try not to have more than 2 lab-related courses each semester/quarter. Good Luck.
Great advice here. I would add that during a semester when you know you have two tough science classes concurrently, take a very light load overall - 3 classes in total. Absolutely do not load yourself up with the ‘usual’ course load. And that is especially true in your freshman year when you are also adjusting to a new environment and want time to make friends and try out new activities. You can make up for the deficit with credits from AP classes or loading up an extra class during a semester when you don’t have a lot of intense demands from the courses required for pre-med.
I’ve dual-enrolled at a community college and a major university. I can go ahead and tell you that there is a lot less busy work that could have otherwise been used to pad your grade, in any case. It’s typical to have a class composed of only a heavily weighted midterm and final, and maybe a couple of short assignments or projects of miniscule value. This becomes more of a judgement of whether you understand and can apply the concepts than how well you can follow directions. Attend class, take GOOD notes, and study REGULARLY and not in huge chunks before the midterm and final.
Usually the harder the courses get, the more the exams are worth. So maybe it’s not a good idea to test out of all your general education requirements if you feel that you’ll struggle in the future.
Dang, how long will it take you to graduate doing that??
Depends on how many AP credits you come in with and how many courses you load up with in the ‘lighter’ semesters. If it turns out that you can handle a bigger workload, have at it - but don’t assume you will be fine with your usual 4-5 classes and end up with Bs and Cs. You’ll have a miserable semester and the risk of knocking yourself out of the range of acceptable GPA is too high. S applied the reduced work-load strategy successfully and still graduated a semester early, so it’s generally not a problem unless you are someone who decides late that you want to go to medical school and have to cram everything in at the end.
I am not sure why are you checking syllabus now. Checking college class syllabus would freak out any HS kid. So, the result is in line with the expected - you are freaked out.
Just prepare for exam (correct, you will need to step up your effort, no matter whatever you took in HS, AP or not), make sure you know the material that will be on the test and take the test. If your preparation did not result in A on the exam, adjust your preparation upward (not necessarily in time, but in effort). Straight forward process that you will have to go thru every year moving to the higher level in every class and much more so starting at Med. School.