I'm a second year undergraduate student and I had initial goals of graduating with a high GPA so that I can go to an even more selective university for grad school. I'm a hardcore fan of believing that everyone should be given the absolute right to control their destiny, even if that means going to an Ivy League University. I know universities have multiple criteria that they look at:
GPA, Exams,Talents, Diversity and more.
My first year was a nightmare. I only got one A and the rest were B's and C's. I did good with my homework and labs, but it was a troubled area, which was my exam scores. I'm here to admit that I'm not the best exam taker and is far from the worst as well; you see, because exams make up as high as 90%, maybe even higher of your final grade, you need to have an A AVERAGE for the midterms and finals. Let say that you had 2 exams for a particular course and you got an 80 on the first, "BOOM!!!," you now cannot get an A in that class. You would seriously have to get 100% on your next exam just to get a 90 and sometimes, that isn't enough.
There can be multiple reasons why people failed to do as high as they would had liked: test anxiety, headache, and simple mistakes. I was originally thinking about majoring in Electrical Engineering since I had a career as an electrician. Due to the fact that it is so so easy to make a mistake from calculations, I had to change course from something that I wanted to major in to Economics.
You probably remember me saying earlier that my first year were B's and C's. That would put me at a 2 point something GPA. The GPA system isn't as great as it was from high school where your GPA was you actual average. They didn't do the crap about weighing your C's more than your B's and etc. Do I feel that the GPA system is fair? Yes I do because my whole school is on that crap. Do I feel cheated by it? Yes I do. Let say I get like an 87 in a class, I will get 3 points out of a possible of 4. Those 3 points are really them averaging a 75 instead of an 87. This GPA system starts cheating you once you get out of the A range, which been difficult for me to achieve because I'm not a perfect test-taker.
I'm about to end with this. I took a break this semester and didn't pick difficult courses. It appears that I might get straight A's this semester, but you never know until you get back your report. I just feel stressed and also feel like I'm walking on a thin line heading from one skyscraper to the next. I make one mistake and "BOOM!!," there go my A in the class. If you can relate to this, please respond. I would like to know that I'm not the only good student that have great work ethic that can't achieve his goals because of the inability to get an above 90 test average. The first year was bad, but I thought that my test scores would improve and it becoming more and more apparent that this is just who I'm with test taking; no matter how well I know the stuff, silly mistakes and test anxiety will prove a match for my goals. Also, GPA and exams scores are very important to universities. And guess what, you need to be an excellent test-taker to get those, even for the GPA, as you now aware of. I feel that students should be able to get an A in a class with a B test average if everything else is perfect. They should give less than perfect test-takers some hope. Thanks for reading.
P.S. I couldn’t find a more appropriate topic to put this thread.
You need to remember that tests (or, more generally, written assessments) are important. Work ethic is great but tests and quizzes are one of the few ways a professor can effectively gauge his/her pupils’ understanding of the material at hand, especially in exceptionally large classes. Your test anxiety is something you’re going to need to overcome sooner or later - we live in a society dominated by a culture of credentials; and the only way to attain those credentials is, more often than not, exams (standardized or otherwise.) Even for trades there is still an expectation that you will be able to demonstrate competency through a “test” of some sort (though it may not be pencil and paper – the related pressure still exists.)
Have you considered discussing this problem with the appropriate student services at your school?
One of the biggest differences between college and high school is that college grades are heavily dependent on tests (or perhaps papers, in writing based classes), and you don’t get brownie points (or at least, this is much less heavily weighted) for doing homework or doing busy work, like you would in high school. If you performed at a B level on exams, then you get a B in the class. It seems kind of silly to give you an A, if you got a B average on your exams. How would that differentiate between students who had a B average from students who had an A average?
Test taking is a skill, just like anything else. Some students are naturally better at it than others, but just because you aren’t naturally adept at test taking doesn’t mean you can’t become better. It also doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have to take tests or that tests shouldn’t be as heavily weighted because you’re not good at them. I’m not good at writing, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t having any writing assignments in classes. It means that I should improve my writing. It’s an important skill to be able to learn material and to be able to apply your knowledge to new problems or to be able to answer questions on an exam or explain your thoughts in written language. How else would you propose teachers assess what you know?
If you have documented anxiety, then you may qualify for testing accommodations through your university, but not being good at taking tests likely isn’t going to be enough.
Thanks preamble1776!! No, I have not considered talking to student services because that is a problem that they would not be able to help me out with. I understand the importance of tests, especially since I had a cousin that had a Ph. D from universities that you probably never heard of and when she took the ASVAB, she failed both the first and second time; she finally past by a point on her third attempt. ASVAB isn’t designed to be too difficult. I think I heard that the reading is on a 5th grade level. My cousin failed it and that makes her university look bad. I know that her degree and ASVAB are not related, but still.
Thanks Baktrax!! Just to be clear, I’m not that bad at taking exams. Am I at the top 10% of exam taking at my university? I don’t think so. I just been frustrated with my inability to approve my exams AVERAGE above a 90%.I can’t tell you how easy it really is to score below that mark. Being that their are usually not that many questions on exams, it only take messing up on one or two questions before you noticed that you didn’t reach your goal.
Most students underestimate the importance of study skills and note-taking. My DD went to a very demanding magnet HS. She and her friends got together at the first break - attending Carnegie Mellon, William and Mary, Stanford and Univ. of Maryland. All said HS was more demanding. One said, “it’s not that my classmates don’t study hard, they just never learned to study efficiently.”
I would talk to your professors and ask: “How do the most succesful students study for this class?”
They may suggest study groups, doing extra problems, attending office hours, etc.
Also if there is a writing center, math center, academic success center or whatever take advantage of it.
Or perhaps you could get a tutor.
Your school has many resources…take advantage of them!
Getting just below a 90% isn’t anything to scoff at, as I’m sure others have told you. It can be frustrating when you aren’t able to get the scores you want to, especially if you were very successful in high school. Looking for strategies to do better may be helpful to you. Have you looked critically at your old exams to see why you lost points (perhaps, going over them with your professor may help)? Was it silly mistakes or did you just not understand the material? Was it the types of questions they asked? Or was it that you studied the wrong material? Working harder is not always the answer. Have you talked to your professors about recommendations for what you should be doing to improve your grades? If it’s silly mistakes, then double-checking your work may help. If it’s running out of time, then coming up with strategies to work faster may help. If it’s not being used to the types of questions they ask, extra practice may help. Etc etc. Figuring out what the problem is will help you do better. If test taking is not the issue, then it may just be that you don’t know the material quite at the level that professors expect you to, and that’s something you can get help with.