Looking for Advice or Reassurance

Hello. If you are reading this, thank you for your time. I’m a first-year college student who just applied for transfer at other schools because my current college doesn’t have the exact major I’m looking for, and I don’t think it’s a great fit for me.

I managed to maintain a 4.0 first semester but now I’m having some trouble with the midterm report and would like advice from anyone who’s kind enough to share.

Everything was smooth sailing until this week. I crammed for hours and for one midterm only to completely bomb it. Looking back, I think I “over studied” and focused on some material more than others because I thought it would be on the exam. But that’s in the past.

I have to share a midterm grade report with my schools by the first day of April. If I do well on the next paper due (which I think should be feasible because my strengths are in writing), my grade should be better but still unsatisfactory (probably a C…). I emailed my professor about extra credit, but that’s not available. I know I could boost my grade but my current concern is the midterm report.

I worked hard for my first semester grades and spent so much time on my essays. I don’t want to jeopardize my chances of transferring just because I had one bad day. I’m not sure what to do now, so any advice would be appreciated.

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What do your other grades look like on the mid-term? If everything’s all As except for one C, I don’t think there would be much of an issue.

Also, where are you applying to transfer? The selectivity of the the transfer school can also play a role in how concerned you might be.

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So far, two As, one B (professor harshly graded midterm, I think everyone was in the same boat here), and then this. The only schools I’ve applied to so far are Barnard and Columbia.

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It may not be the best for your applications, but there’s nothing you can really do about the grades at the moment. Do you know if your university sends a grade distribution report when it sends out grade reports? What I mean is, does it say that there are X number of As, X number of Bs, and so on and so forth? If you have one of the top grades in the class, then it may not be as damaging.

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That’s interesting, I’ve never heard of that before. I don’t think it sends out a distribution, I think it’s just your grade in __ class.

You could ask the professors in the B and C classes if they would be willing to indicate the grade distributions (either as percentages or number of students) with each of their classes and then send that in to the colleges you’re applying to.

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That sounds like it could work, I’ll ask about that. Thank you for your suggestion!

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