<p>I was awarded a full-tuition merit scholarship from my state flagship. As a requirement to keep the scholarship, recipients must maintain a 3.6 cumulative GPA, which will be assessed at the end of every academic year.
I find this ridiculous that the bar is set so high, and I am worried that I won't be able to maintain the GPA with my major, which is physics. I know that I would have no problem keeping a 3.6 if I were to major in something easier, such as a subject in the Humanities, but physics is where my primary interests lie.
If I lose this scholarship, I know that my parents will kill me, and I won't be able to do many things that I wanted to do, such as study abroad. Is there anything I can do beside study my ass off to maintain that GPA? I have done well in college courses in high school, but I hate feeling like I'm being forced to keep a 3.6, which essentially I am. Should I talk to the scholarship and financial aid department and ask if the requirement can be waived? Should I consider a different major? Please advise.</p>
<p>I should add that I am taking tough courses for my freshman year:
Semester 1:
Physics for Scientists 1 (the course for honors physics students)
Differential Equations and Linear Algebra
Beginning Russian
Freshman seminar for physics
-14 credits-</p>
<p>Semester 2:
Physics for Scientists 2
Beginning Russian 2
Math class or GE</p>
<p>…the entire point of a merit scholarship is that you’re getting it based on how well you do in school. They’re not going to waive the gpa requirement. They have it to make sure that people don’t slack in college after they’ve gotten a scholarship.</p>
<p>The thing is, I’ve looked at the GPA requirements for other schools and very few are this high. Most are around a 3.0, and some are even as low as a 2.5. I don’t think it’s very fair for science/engineering majors, where even if you study hard in your courses, sometimes even great students get B’s.</p>
<p>Okay, but the school you picked does require that, and you’re getting a full tuition scholarship. A 3.6 is pretty high, but if you didn’t want to have to keep your gpa that high then you should’ve picked one of the schools that had a lower requirement. I know that it doesn’t seem fair for people with more difficult majors, but that’s just how it is.</p>
<p>
I am not so sure about that. One thing I noticed in college is that it’s much easier to get As in math and science classes than in the humanities or social sciences. You can get 100% on a problem set or physics exam, but there’s no such thing as a perfect paper. In fact, almost everyone at my undergraduate college who graduates summa cum laude (with a 3.9+ GPA) is a science major. </p>
<p>It might be easier to sneak through a humanities major with a 3.0 GPA if you don’t want to do your homework, but you’d have to work bloody hard to keep an A average in a humanities major. Much harder than for a physics major.</p>
<p>You decided on that school, and you accepted that scholarship. You are bound by that requirement. You don’t have to be a physics major, and it might even be unfair for you to get an exemption because you think your major is more difficult than a “humanities” major who shouldn’t get an exemption. </p>
<p>Also, you don’t need to take Russian in addition to what looks like required coursework, which has a notoriously hard learning curve. You could take a different language that is less difficult.</p>
<p>The likelihood of them waiving the requirement is considerably less than the probability of an asteroid bearing alien life forms hitting the earth and Samuel L. Jackson leading humanity in rebellion.</p>
<p>Knowing that you need to keep up your grades, my suggestion is that you begin the semester visiting your professors’ office hours, get to know any TAs, form study groups, and make sure you know EXACTLY what’s required for each class. Don’t overload on credits so that you can focus on your classes. Maintain a healthy lifestyle so you’re less likely to get sick and have a bad day on an exam day. Use rate my professors so you avoid any known pitfalls.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking about a different major, maybe try a class in that field instead of one of the electives you’ve listed (Russian?).</p>
<p>And congrats on the scholarship!</p>
<p>b@r!um - That is probably true, but I have heard of physics courses having such low average test scores that a 30% is curved to a C. That sounds very ridiculous to me and does not display overall understanding of the material. On the other hand, one can expect stability in humanities courses. You won’t have to strive for a 50% on a test in a humanities course, while you would in some math or science courses. This is dispiriting and is probably one of the reasons why many people choose not to major in STEM fields.</p>
<p>caemin- I realize that, and I suppose that is my main complaint- that the standards are the same regardless of major. Sure, I could change my major, but I don’t think I should have to be controlled by my institution. Why should students be punished for challenging themselves? Intelligent students who performed well throughout high school should be given the chance to explore academic interests without worrying about losing their scholarships, especially if athletes consistently are given full rides without stringent GPA requirements. As for taking Russian, I am not worried about that class because I already know some Russian, and languages do generally come easy to me. The only other language I am interested in learning is Arabic, and Russian is much easier to learn than it.</p>
<p>stradmom- Thanks for the advice. I plan on doing everything you suggested. In fact I have looked up my professors on ratemyprofessor.com and they same fair. I wanted to take another course in addition to Russian, but I don’t want to overload my credits. You are wondering why I am taking Russian, of all courses? I am very interested in languages in addition to science, and I know that learning a language in college is something that I can take with me for the rest of my life and use, as opposed to something like Art History. But perhaps a greater reason for my taking Russian is because my backup major (I suppose that’s what it is to me) is International Studies, which requires three years of a foreign language. In fact, I was planning on majoring in International Studies until about a week ago.</p>
<p>
One of the difficulties in the humanities is that professors have wildly different expectations. A paper with solid content might get you an A from one professor and a B from another, just because they prefer different writing styles. The most ambitious humanities majors spend a lot of time talking to their professors outside of class just to figure out exactly what each is looking for. There’s less guesswork involved in physics.</p>
<p>Science classes might have a lot of variations in the “percentage” scores on exams, but the final grades after curving tend to be relatively stable. A students usually stay A students because they get the highest scores, whether that score be 95% on an easy exam or 45% on a difficult one.</p>
<p>
I think the question was, why Russian instead of an easier foreign language? Russian is so different from English that it’s really hard to get started.</p>
<p>“especially if athletes consistently are given full rides without stringent GPA requirements”</p>
<p>They got a scholarship for athletics, so they have to maintain athletic requirements. You got a scholarship for academics, so you have to maintain academic requirements. </p>
<p>“that the standards are the same regardless of major”</p>
<p>It would be unfair to make the requirements for one major harder than for another major, because different people perform differently in different areas.</p>
<p>b@r!um - You bring up very good points about humanities courses. Perhaps I haven’t taken enough of them to understand firsthand what you are saying, but I know what you mean. With math and science you can usually do enough problems to get the concepts down, but in the humanities you never know what your professor expects… The main argument I have is that humanities majors statistically tend to have higher GPAs than STEM majors. There is no arguing that fact.
Russian really isn’t as difficult as most people perceive it. The fact that it uses a different alphabet than English throws people off, but the alphabet is very easy to learn and from then on it’s just like learning any other language.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That makes more sense to me now. And it sounds like you already have a head start on the language, which can only help.</p>
<p>
Fact? Does your college publish GPA statistics by major?</p>
<p>Here’s one data set a I found. Graduating GPA of entering class of 2002, University of California system-wide:</p>
<p>Physics: 3.10
Math: 3.12
Engineering: 3.13
Social Sciences: 3.08
Humanities: 3.07</p>
<p>But even if it was true that STEM GPAs are lower at your college than other GPAs, it would not follow that STEM majors would have a harder time earning a 3.6 GPA. That argument just shows your misunderstanding of statistics. What actually matters is the distribution of grades, not their average. Here’s one example:</p>
<p>College X has 100 humanities and 100 science students. The 100 humanities majors all have a 3.3 GPA each, while 50 science majors have a GPA of 3.7 and 50 science major have a GPA of 2.3. Then the average humanities GPA is 3.3 and the average science GPA is 3.0. However, more science majors would make the 3.6 cutoff (50 of them) than humanities majors (none of them).</p>
<p>Of course that’s a bit extreme, but that’s exactly what I was getting at when I said that science majors have an easier time earning top grades. Two fields might have very similar averages but the grades could be distributed quite differently.</p>
<p>Here is an article I found on the matter:
[5</a> Hardest and Easiest College Majors by GPA’s - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37241878/5-hardest-and-easiest-college-majors-by-gpas/]5”>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37241878/5-hardest-and-easiest-college-majors-by-gpas/)</p>
<p>I don’t know what the average GPAs by major are at my college, but perhaps I could inquire. What I was referring to was the nationwide average GPA by major.</p>
<p>The CBS article is not quoting national averages. It’s the averages of 5,000 students who graduated over a decade from a single unnamed liberal arts college. That doesn’t sound representative of national averages, does it?</p>
<p>That single college might have a skewed grade distribution, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find the same grade distribution elsewhere. The UC data I quoted combines data from 8 different universities and does not display a significant disadvantage of science majors.</p>
<p>I was awarded a nice scholarship from my school and it obviously came with a min GPA requirement. My scholarship was merit but not major specific so I assume students of a variety of majors, STEM and Humanities, received a similar scholarship. While I am a Humanities major, which you argue has an easier course load, I have a much harder schedule than my peers. I’m in Navy ROTC, so I wake up at 5 am four times a week (not including weekend events), am required to take a Naval class every semester, a year of calc, year of calc bases physics, as well many other scholastic requirements. Yet I did not come running to the office that so generously gave me a scholarship complaining that my life was harder than my peers and j should not have the same requirements as they do. I instead worked my ass off and made the Dean’s list every semester thus far. </p>
<p>You were given a FULL tuition scholarship! Only 1% of the entire world even gets to attend college and most students graduate with debt that haunts them for years. And you barely have to pay! Stop complaining, and realize the school would not put that GPA requirement if they thought it was impossible to keep. And remember, you accepted this requirement when you accepted the scholarship. Work hard now so you’re not stuck working hard while paying off student loans after you graduate. </p>
<p>Sorry for the rant everyone, it’s just tough for me to see someone complain about an amazing opportunity and gift they have been offered. Hell, if they don’t want it, I’ll take it. I think my 3.9 GPA on 3 hours of sleep a night is worthy, no?</p>
<p>It also depends on what is easier for you. Writing might come naturally to some, but be painful for others. Math might come easy to some, and not to others. You chose to pursue physics for whatever reason. You know the terms of your scholarship. Do they allow a probation semester, so that if you fall below a 3.6 you still keep your scholarship so long as you pull it up again the next semester? You will not get a waiver based on your major. Accept the challenge or go elsewhere. It is silly to argue which major is tougher than another, because it is all relative. </p>
<p>However, consider this: You can teach students to do a math problem correctly, and to identify body systems and their functions correctly, but you cannot “correctly” teach students to think critically. Hard sciences and math can be graded more objectively than the humanities could ever be. But again, at least in terms of difficulty, it is all relative.</p>