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<p>Wouldn’t that be like taking the lazy way out? I mean shouldn’t people work to accomplish things themselves as opposed to relying on other people?</p>
<p>Take heart in the fact that when the health care bill is finalized and implemented, there will be so many retirements of doctors that you’ll be able to get into Med School with a 2.45GPA…and very few people are going to want to pay ivy league med school tuition costs for the lowered income. So it’s probably not even worth your time grade grubbing.</p>
<p>But then again, it may be tougher to get into law school, as once again—lawyers win.</p>
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<p>Ahh, that made me laugh :)</p>
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<p>There is a big difference between lazily relying on others to do the work for you and working as a team. There are very few professions where you work as a lone individual. Nearly all work in the modern world, including both medicine and law, is done as a team. MIT practically <em>requires</em> students to work in teams, because that is way that sience is done.</p>
<p>Hey, you gotta look at the positives in any situation! Though I honestly can’t imagine anyone with a 3.45GPA at Yale getting turned down for many med schools, but I have a feeling that it’s going to get alot easier…maybe the government will even pay your tuition if you agree to go into primary care. Alot of changes coming.</p>
<p>Let’s take stock here. A Baptist who cannot be gay but is; you have to get at least a 3.9 GPA to go to either Harvard Medical or Law School, etc.</p>
<p>You are making impossible demands on your spirit and mind. No wonder you feel like your world is falling apart. </p>
<p>Before you find will contentment or success, you have a truckload of baggage to release. I’m not sure a public forum offers all the help you may need. To use a medical metaphor, CC is a good screening place but you may need to find real life treatment with a professional. </p>
<p>If one counselor didn’t help, try another. </p>
<p>FYI: There are segments of the Baptist faith who accept homosexuality and welcome homosexuals. PM me if you like.</p>
<p>Dbate:</p>
<p>Get over yourself. I’m a freshman at Swarthmore, (while it’s not one of your precious Ivies, I’m told it has a certain prestige of its own) and I got grades much worse than yours this first semester– all passing, but certainly not what I was used to. Am I bothered? A little. Am I panicking, demanding to have my ego soothed by strangers on the internet, and attacking anyone who lacks sympathy? No.</p>
<p>I always set high goals for myself too-- surprisingly, you weren’t the only person to see that poster in middle school. But I’m sure that, with a combination of the study skills I developed over the semester, taking slightly easier, more interesting courses, an renewed energy from the break, I’ll be able to improve my GPA. And after all, did you go to college to get A’s, or to learn?</p>
<p>So get help, both from tutors and a maybe therapist, and realize that there are plenty of perfectly intelligent people who don’t get straight As at selective colleges and universities.</p>
<p>A freshman in Yale can start at least 3 different level of classes in math and chem, depending on his preparation. Which one did you take? Some students moved from upper to lower level of classes after realizing their expected grades or his high school preparation, right?</p>
<p>Is IR “intro to IR”? Is Bio with or without a pre-req or placement?</p>
<p>If you took all lower intro levels, you need to change your expectation at Yale; there are lots more well-prepared kids around you. If you took upper intro or lower intermediate levels for math and chem, you should be fine. Just manage your class selection for a while to improve your GPA.</p>
<p>“I went to a counselor already. And I tried to explain to him that everything in life requires planning, that is why I need to have a game plan. I planned my entire life out the summer after fifth grade and it has gone fairly smoothly so far ONLY because I planned for it.”</p>
<p>I agree with whomever suggested planning. No matter how well one plans, things are going to mess up your plans. Change happens. The unexpected happens, and one needs to be prepared to bounce back, not collapse.</p>
<p>Your reaction to your gpa is extreme, and is basically black and white thinking. In fact it reminds me of the thinking of someone who was at Harvard when I was there. He was a black guy from inner city Philly. He had entered Harvard at age 16, and planned to be a doctor. Due to “bad grades,” he almost gave up his goal. He thought he was too stupid for Harvard. I didn’t hear about this until decades later. </p>
<p>What he considered were "bad grades’ were probably grades like yours. Fortunately, however, he stayed at Harvard, applied to med school, and ended up graduating from Harvard med and become a surgeon.</p>
<p>I was surprised to hear that in college he had almost changed his career goal. He had thought he was stupid, when meanwhile his classmates were regarding him as brilliant.</p>
<p>Back to you: Everyone I know except one person who applied to med school from Harvard got in. The one person who didn’t was a transfer from BU and got really low grades due to partying too much. One of my friends who graduated without honors at Harvard (hard to do since only a 3.0 is required for honors) ended up going to Columbia med school and being one of the tops in her class there. She now is on faculty at a med school.</p>
<p>If all you are paying attention to is worrying about your grades, you’re missing the wonderful experience that Yale is offering you. I hope you’re taking the opportunity to explore some new academic areas even if you don’t feel confident about your abiiity to do well in them. </p>
<p>There’s so much difference between being a lawyer and being a doctor that sounds like you haven’t yet learned enough about those fields or your interest to know what you want to do. For many people such a decision doesn’t come until junior year or even until after college.</p>
<p>Another of my Harvard friends was an engineering major and then studied music at a top conservatory after Harvard. She ended up going to medical school, and now is happy being one of the top surgeons in her field (despite going to a little known med school). </p>
<p>Enjoy your life, and don’t measure your worth by your stats.</p>
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<p>Those segments are wrong. I don’t want to talk about that though.</p>
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<p>I started in the second to highest level for chemistry. I do not intend to drop to a lower level, but just need to work harder than I am to get better grades.</p>
<p>The bio class I took is one of the harder ones even though it is an intro class. My freshman counselor actually said to avoid it if you can, but of course I didn’t listen.</p>
<p>I did take intro to IR and the only advanced class I took was the calculus. But I am done with the required math so I am not worried about that. The only math that I may have to would be statistics.</p>
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<p>I don’t know why you are wasting your time talking to us. You are clearly the sort of person that doesn’t accept advice.</p>
<p>Thank you Northstarmom, to be honest I only posted this thread to hear from you and JHS as I both respect you very much. I guess I am being irrational about this and should just calm down.</p>
<p>Your story is VERY helpful and I will try to work harder next semester. I am sorry but I am not going to drop my goal of Harvard med, but I will try to relax a little in relation to my grades. Thanks :)</p>
<p>“I don’t know why you are wasting your time talking to us. You are clearly the sort of person that doesn’t accept advice.”</p>
<p>I agree with coureur. Go ahead and bang your head against the wall after not following advice. Just please stop posting your angst here. You don’t take advice, so don’t waste our time asking for it. What you’re doing here is very irritating.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, your grades are fine. What did you expect, a 4.0? Is that all that will make you happy?</p>
<p>If you try to measure your worth at Yale like that, you’re going to be like the majority of Yale students – you’ll fall short. You’re with some of the country’s smartest students. A few of them will graduate summa. A very few will have 4.0s. </p>
<p>Many will graduate with no honors. Virtually everyone in your class will obtain a Yale degree. Virtually everyone also will get into a grad program in the field of their choice. There are no stupid people in your class. There’s no reason to be stressing over not having a 4.0. You are not your gpa. If you calculate your worth by your gpa and class rank, no matter where you are, you’re going to be miserable because no one is perfect all of the time.</p>
<p>If you really are a person who feels like garbage unless you have a 4.0, Yale made a mistake in admitting you. It’s not a place for grade grubbers or for people who think they and others are only successes if their grades are perfect.</p>
<p>This happened to my D. She went to a high school that did not have ANY grade inflation and wound up with a low GPA. </p>
<p>If you are really all about the grades, then go to a state school now and try to recoup your GPA with summer school and easy classes. </p>
<p>One of the colleges my D applied to was familiar with her school’s grading policy and took her off the waiting list. But you cannot expect med schools to do the same and I would urge you to change to a school where a 4.0 is within reach for you.</p>
<p>I think Dbate is a ■■■■■ at worst (I recall him saying in another thread that it “didn’t really matter what school you went to”, but now suddenly he’s a little Ivy-status obsessed), or at best is just interested in extended self-pity rather than actually solving or bettering his situation. I wouldn’t advise anyone to waste their time or advice on someone who is clearly not interested. </p>
<p>Don’t ask for suggestions if you’re just going to turn every one down and instead continue complaining.</p>
<p>Oh enough already. Stop. If I want to listen to someone whine incessantly and not listen to any constructive advice which they ASKED for I will turn off my computer and go to work.</p>
<p>Regarding that poster in the classroom that read:</p>
<p>“If you shoot for the moon and miss, a least you hit a star…”</p>
<p>The moon is 230,000 miles away. The nearest star is our sun which is 93,000,000 miles away. You would really really need to be off track to hit a star, and not only that, wouldn’t hitting the sun be worse than hitting the moon? An if the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, and you are traveling at 17,500 mph, it would take you 227 days to get to the sun. It is only 13 hours to the moon. That gives you 226 1/2 days to correct your mistake. </p>
<p>You really should ask your teacher to take that poster down.</p>
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<p>LOL. What a gem. Now I know why I continue to look at these posts.</p>
<p>Dbate, I’m not sure I want to stroke your ego, because I think we all sense that your ego is part of the problem, not the solution. But sometime, in a quiet moment, you have to sit back and think about what a freaking fantastic job you did this semester. Man, you were dealing with a load of stuff – Kermit the Frog didn’t have an easy time being green on Sesame Street, and you are a black, Texan, Southern Baptist, conservative, prideful, inflexible, newly out gay freshman at Yale. Any half of those epithets would have gotten you a free pass to a total meltdown, and the worst you could do with all of them was an A-/B+ average (and your toughest course is completely in your rear-view mirror). From my standpoint, that kind of performance almost justifies your own inflated view of yourself. Much as I would prefer, from a moral standpoint, that you recenter yourself and develop some humility and serenity, objectively I think that you have burnished your credentials as a world-beater. </p>
<p>Luckily, you won’t let it go to your head. If you did, you might not be able to get your head through some doorways.</p>
<p>One other point: I get that it’s disconcerting to find yourself off the successful path you mapped out for yourself years ago. But surely you are ambitious enough not to content yourself with merely fulfilling the dreams of a 10-year-old boy? It’s time to develop some man-dreams; congratulations on making a great start.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the entire thread, but here’s my advice. </p>
<p>Walk over to the career services office, if you haven’t already, and ask to speak to the pre-med counselor–or whatever it’s called at Yale. Explain your concerns. Ask what sorts of med schools you have a “shot” at if your grades don’t improve. </p>
<p>I think you’ll feel better. </p>
<p>I know a young man who went to a less competitive college as a pre-med. He aced all his courses. Then he took the MCATs. His results were abysmal. He took a year off and tried to study on his own while working as an EMT. Didn’t get in second time around. Dream died. </p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, Yale students get good MCAT scores. Those are important. </p>
<p>Moreover, my understanding is that you are URM. If so, you have more “wiggle room” than most. I’m not saying this to start an argument; it’s just fact.</p>