<p>Bluebayou, I didn’t miss the point - in the sentence right before the one you quoted, I said your GPA didn’t matter UNLESS you were planning on medical school, law school, or graduate school. I know the importance of a high GPA - I graduated from college last year and I’m in a Ph.D program at Columbia.</p>
<p>No, your pre-med dreams are not over with one C in freshman chemistry. If you have a high overall grade point average, one C will not destroy you. And even if you do not have a high undergrad GPA, there are a lot of ways to overcome that in medical school admissions. I go to a school of public health and most of my friends have designs on medical school. A lot of them are overcoming low undergraduate GPAs (or low MCATs) by earning a master’s in public health or nutrition, which they were planning on doing anyway - they just did it first. One of my friends just got into medical school on his second round after retaking the MCATs and earning a master’s in nutrition.</p>
<p>Also…college is not a job. Trust me. Graduate school is a job…college is not. I am dubious about that 2 hours for every 1 hour of class thing. It depends on the class and the student. I would NOT need to spend 6 hours a week studying for freshman English, but I would probably need more for freshman chemistry. There are no hard and fast rules that will guide you through college; you have to learn it as you go along.</p>
<p>The typical freshman should approach college as a job. The OP started this thread because of a concern that they “couldn’t compete” at the school they’re going to. Furthermore, clutch01 told us that he/she never did any homework in high school and was concerned that he/she would be in over his/her head. IMO, the quickest way to overcome the anxiety of taking on any complex and unfamiliar task is to break it down into manageable pieces. The simplest approach is to view college as workplace with deadlines and targets to be met. </p>
<p>The 2 hours of study time is a guideline not an intractable regulation. I fully expect that clutch01 will find that there are some classes that require less outside work and some that require substantially more, but I still feel it is a valid rule of thumb overall. Considering how much outside work is involved in a class should help any student make better choices when putting together their schedule. Success at work or college comes down to proper allocation of resources, in this case time and intellectual horsepower. Consistency may be the last bastion of the unimaginative, but it’s a good foundation for planning how you’re going to attack your education.</p>
<p>I’ve been to two graduate schools, and both were a lot of fun. Heck a lot more fun than undergrad; thus, it depends. </p>
<p>But, being premed should be considered a JOB; most successful applicants spend their Saturday afternoons in the library while the masses are in the stadium cheering for the team. The odds of going off to earn an MPH or MHS or other health-related masters and then applying to med school is much less than spending that time earning better grades as an undergrad. Plus, your friends have the additional lost opportunity costs of time, tuition and working. Unhooked applicants need a 3.5+ gpa in the sciences to be competitive, and a 3.7 gpa if aiming for top med schools. It only takes a couple of C’s and a 3.5 is really hard to achieve.</p>