<p>@other posters: Please try to keep this thread civil. It’s degraded into personal attacks and ■■■■■-like advice.
@the OP: While your grades might not be top notch, you already go to a top notch school and you have plenty of time to bring them up. Try to understand why you did so good on the bio final and apply it to your other classes.
Good luck!!</p>
<p>If it’s any comfort, your GPA would likely be lower at UCLA, UCSD, UC BERKELEY, CAL TECH, MIT, AND REED! It is very respectable, esp. for a first-semester freshman/-woman.</p>
<p>As a former Ivy League Med. School Grad., 20 years ago, I can tell you that research (being first author on a published paper or two), losing a limb on the front lines of Kosovo, while adminstering aid, a less conventional major for med. school applicants (English or Philosophy, anyone?), and high MCATS will count as much or more than your GPA. Medical schools consider HUGELY the grade inflation/deflation of the institution from which an applicant is applying. It is part of the reason why places like the UCs, Univ. of Michigan, MIT, Reed, etc. have such a high percentage of their students accepted to their top 3 med. school choices.</p>
<p>If medicine is your passion, and I am questioning your commitment given that you speak of defaulting to law if pre-med does not work out, nothing should deter you, even if you have to do a supplemental year doing significant research or administering vaccines in a third-world country, post-graduation, or pursue an MPH or some other graduate degree.</p>
<p>@ jonri, post #101. Interesting comment. It has been several years since I’ve been in Woolsey Hall, and I have to admit that my recollection is weak; but I think of that memorial as much lighter marble, not angled, not fit into the landscape, and part of a fairly classical building. The Yale memorial seems to me to be very much like the memorials in the Cambridge colleges, to the students and fellows who died in WWI and WWII. Is this mis-remembering?</p>
<p>Relax, Dbate, and enjoy the rest of your break.</p>
<p>here is the deal…</p>
<p>you were really smart in high school. Possibly the smartest. Guess what… EVERY PERSON YOU NOW GO TO SCHOOL WITH WAS THE SMARTEST KID IN THEIR HIGH SCHOOL. So you are a middle range student at Yale. You are still in the top 1% of smartest 18 year olds in the country.</p>
<p>And now you set your goals of Harvard Medical School. Harvard Medical School only accepts the smartest of the smartest of the smartest. The top 1% of the top 1%.</p>
<p>Maybe you aren’t “top 1% of the top 1%” smart. It’s not bad. It’s just reality.</p>
<p>You need to live a little more. Aren’t you also the poster who:
- thought your family that makes $100,000+/year was poor?
- made a thread wondering if you only got into Yale b/c you were a minority?
and now - making a thread that you need reassurance that your grades at Yale, WHICH ARE ABOVE THE YALE AVERAGE (i think), are not terrible?</p>
<p>professional counselor. go there. If you don’t change your mindset, you are going to hate what should be, arguably, the best 4 years of your life.</p>
<p>There are a lot worse things you can be than “an average Yale student”. Seriously.*</p>
<p>*I read more of this thread after I responded… being gay does not count as one of the things that is worse than “an average Yale student”.</p>
<p>I’ll tell you something:
You’re not an idiot!!! (I hope you feel better now!)</p>
<p>Why do you want to be a doctor? </p>
<p>Seriously. I’d like to know. Is it because you want to cure incurable diseases? Is it to make a lot of money? Is it because you enjoy biology and chemistry more than other subjects? Is it because you want to hear people say Dr. Dbate? </p>
<p>It takes a lot of time and effort and sweat to become a doctor. Incredibly long hours with no sleep and minimal pay. Ask yourself why you want to be a doctor before you put yourself through that. </p>
<p>And why do you want to become a lawyer. Many lawyers I know are totally miserable – they hate what they do. </p>
<p>I think your grades are fine. </p>
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<p>I agree with this. Many colleges are very sensitive about accepting students like this, because they know the consequence is that these kids get to college, get grades lower than an A, and then break down. </p>
<p>We often wonder on CC why some seemingly wonderful student with amazing statistics and ECs don’t get into top schools. Sometimes the answer is that we don’t see what the teachers wrote and the essay. Sometimes those subjective criteria indicate this attitude of “I’m a perfectionist and if I don’t get an A I’m a failure.” </p>
<p>Back to Dbate: You should take classes at Yale in subjects that you enjoy and want to learn more. Experiment. Try subjects outside the traditional English, biology, chemistry stuff. You aren’t declaring a major tomorrow. Your future is not cast in stone.</p>
<p>Dbate may not be reading this anymore. He wanted the thread to close. However, I do want to add a comment, after reading the entire thread.</p>
<p>I think that the extreme fear of the “slippery slope” to “mediocrity,” after getting some darn good first semester grades in very difficult “weeder” courses (Dbate, the first year pre-med sciences are intentionally brutal to weed out students who should consider other paths, and with your grades, you are NOT one of those who are being weeded out), is way out of the norm.</p>
<p>The black and white thinking, the rigidity (common on young people, but again, extreme) in expectations, the emphasis on planning, and the emphasis on external measures of who you are (such as grades) all present a picture of someone whose basic sense of safety- psychically- is extremely threatened. These are obsessive-compulsive tendencies, not rational at all, and may be long-term personal pathology, may stem from background or cultural issues, or may be kind of new onset in the transitional first semester of college. Also, developing a sort of false identity during adolescence in terms of your sexuality, may have played a role in your feelings of being unsafe.</p>
<p>In any case, these problems go way, way beyond what your average college counselor or even average therapist can deal with. Dbate, you need to get yourself to a psychiatrist or psychologist, or a clinic that deals with these things. Do it now, before these issues blossom into some sort of life-crippling problems. </p>
<p>I strongly suggest medication and cognitive behavioral therapy with an expert on OCD and similar problems, who can help you change your entire pattern of thinking. Medication can help you learn how to think and feel differently, and makes therapy more accessible for you, but does not have to be long-term.</p>
<p>Your grades are great. One of my kids is at an Ivy and would have been happy to get those grades. She took weeder classes in music and half the students dropped out mid-year due to the effect on their GPA’s. She stayed, didn’t even look at her grades, and I find her in the living room listening to some obscure Renaissance piece of music that she discovered in the course. I don’t care what her grades were: the look on her face while listening to that music tells me the semester was a great success.</p>
<p>Please, please understand that my post is intended to be helpful and not critical or unkind. I realize you won’t be able to hear it, and won’t like it, but I really, really hope that you listen. I believe you have a budding psychiatric problem that you can nip in the bud, and then learn some new thinking and feeling patterns that will serve you well as you pursue your dreams, not matter what your grades might be.</p>
<p>With better health in this regard, you may not even want to be a doctor or lawyer, which are common goals, but if pursued rigidly or for the wrong reasons, not the best path. (Actually, the two best doctors we have ever had, were English majors!) I hope that you can have some time for what I have seen termed “wise wandering,” exploring who you are and what you want to do. If your thinking patterns can loosen up a bit, and you can feel a little safer, perhaps you can enjoy a few years of exploration in a more relaxed way: that is how college really is supposed to be: liberating and fun, despite all the hard work.</p>
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<p>I think that’s totally over the top. Talk about armchair psychoanalysis!</p>
<p>Yes, we agree he needs to lighten up. But goodness – OCD!!!</p>
<p>I think that he is stuck in rigid thinking patterns that are detrimental to his health and well-being. These issues may be camouflaged in the intense environment of Yale, and I hope that someone with whom he talks, picks up on the difference. He does not need to suffer like this, but, I think, he will have to do some hard work (non-academic work) in “CBT” or other therapy, to feel better. These are probably very long-standing patterns of thinking and feeling that life might alter over time, but he can certainly shorten the learning curve by getting help asap.</p>
<p>I think it is sort of as if he has a finger in the dike, to avoid flooding, but there is really no water. He needs to figure out that there is no need to keep his finger there. He can relax, and things will still be fine.</p>
<p>^ IMHO, Compmom is 100% correct. Anyone who has had experience with CBT can easily see that this young man has a great deal of anxiety, some signs of depression and some very unhealthy thinking patterns.</p>
<p>Let’s look at some of his posts:</p>
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<p>All hallmark signs of obsessive thinking. If you read between the sentences about his grades, I see a kid who is struggling with some major issues - fear of failure, unrelenting standards, need to be perfect, probably very poor self-esteem, very controlling, lots of anxiety, some depression, very rigid thinking. </p>
<p>It appears he is trying to overcompensate for his feelings of inadequacy by being perfect and the ‘best.’</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with doing your best but it becomes a huge problem when it becomes an obsession. While it might not appear to be a problem on the surface to some parents, after all, who wouldn’t want a kid who works hard and has highs standards and is at Yale, there is a lot more going on here than that. I know plenty of students who have high aspirations and are high achievers that don’t obsess like this. Some do but many do not. They might not be happy that they ended up with a 3.4GPA but after a day or two, they shrug it off and go on to the next task. Dbate, on the other hand, thinks he’s on a downward spiral and his life is over. That’s a problem. Telling him to ‘lighten up’ is not the solution. This type of obsessive thinking pattern requires professional help and generally years to overcome. If he doesn’t address it now, it will likely spill over into his career and relationships and cause him all sorts of issues. Just my two cents but I speak from a lot of experience.</p>
<p>OCD =/=rigid thinking or perfectionism–it’s MUCH more specific of a diagnosis than that.</p>
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<p>On the other hand it may not be that complicated. Haven’t you ever known a pretty girl who likes to complain how ugly she is just to induce others to deny it and tell her how beautiful she is?</p>
<p>I think sometimes on an internet forum, people say things they normally wouldn’t in real life and appear very extreme. We all have some dark fear inside of us, but we don’t say it sometimes because we are afraid people may think we are crazy.</p>
<p>D2 was freaking out over a possible B+ in English yesterday. We told her to get a grip. She is afraid with a B+ she wouldn’t be able to get into Yale. I said, “Why, so you could be another Dbate on CC?”
No, I didn’t say that. I thought of it.</p>
<p>I agree with compmom. And the posts about “I know someone who had a 3.4 and got into Harvard law/Harvard med/Yale law/Stanford law” aren’t exactly helping, because they are perpetuating that the end goal is still about prestige, instead of just being content with oneself. “you could still make it into Harvard med” isn’t the point. “you deserve to feel happy and content with yourself regardless of Harvard med” is.</p>
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<p>True. And unlike most of our kids, the OP has no sympathetic and rational ear at home. He has posted that he doesn’t have anyone IRL with whom he can discuss his problems, particularly issues surrounding his coming out. CC is his only outlet. I do think he’d benefit from professional counseling, but let’s not drive him away by diagnosing a mental disorder based on his posts here.</p>
<p>All right, if everyone else is failing to make you feel better by proving that you’re nowhere near being an idiot, how’s this for a change?</p>
<p>You ARE an idiot.</p>
<p>There… Happy, Mr. above-average-top-college-student?</p>
<p>Coureur: some pretty girls who complain about being ugly actually believe they are, and may even have body dysmorphic disorder. Just as with Dbate, there is no possibility of reassurance or comfort from someone else, because the thinking has sort of made a channel in the brain. Differentiating this from “normal” apearance concerns can be tricky.</p>
<p>The reading between the lives done by MomLive is exactly the kind of thing that points to Dbate having deeper issues than just worrying about grades. The kind of repetitive, formulaic ideas expressed by the original poster, that she cites, are worrisome and probably very painful, and can also send a person down many wrong roads.</p>
<p>The comments by Pizzagirl are insightful, especially the one about the point not being getting grades good enough to get in to med school.</p>
<p>OCD is not just obsessions about germs and handwashing, for instance. I don’t want to go into details, and I do not have these issues myself, but they run in my family- and the rigidity that this student has is really key to the problem and the solution.</p>
<p>This is not intended to drive Dbate away. But if he only seeks help from college counselors, he may not get the help he needs. These posts are intended to help him. Only a person who stigmatizes a person with mental health issues would say this. Would it be driving him away to suggest he has asthma or diabetes?</p>
<p>It is silly to debate this amongst ourselves, without this student reading it himself, but maybe this will help someone else. In any case, I am ending my part in the discussion and hope that he feels better soon. I was hoping that some straight talk would help someday, even if not now. It is just one point of view among many that offer a lot for him to think about.</p>
<p>I know your intentions are good, compmom, but this is not a perfect world. Telling a student on an anonymous discussion board that he has a serious mental disorder is not the same as suggesting he has asthma or diabetes.</p>
<p>Didn’t anyone also pick up that Dbate said he missed a few classes because he was bereft and prayed to God, Who did not answer? Notice: he missed classes over this. </p>
<p>If you’ve never lived among religious fundamentalists who undermine your persona due to your sexual orientation, you can’t quite get how rigid and confused that factor alone can make a person. I won’t discuss OCD. I do know, from listening to many people, that it is extremely hard to reconcile a belief in God (as taught with one path to find…) against a strong discovery of self that contradicts earlier spiritual training.</p>
<p>I have no prescription pad, but meeting DBate where he is, I’d agree with him: it’s a crisis of faith first. So go to experts who understand faith, in broader terms than you learned it. Take a course in comparative relgions. Talk to other Baptists who do not share the extreme hostility of Southern Baptists to homosexual orientation; I believe one above invited you to PM. </p>
<p>My own view is that God does answer our prayers, just sometimes says “no” or “not yet” or “go back to the drawing board.” That’s the answer. </p>
<p>I’m not Christian, but I know people from my own faith who struggle with rigid formulas for behavior. The expert who might help Dbate reconcile his past with his present might be someone in the world of religion, not science, to reassure him that he is absolutely okay as a gay human being without losing God. JMO.</p>
<p>That’s a lovely insight, P3T.</p>
<p>I vacillate between wanting to give Dbate a hug and tell him everything is going to be fine and trying to scare him a bit into the realization that it’s not the best idea in the world to try to deal with these things alone, which of course is the direction his instincts will send him. It is a bit frightening to me to think about the layers of aloneness this boy may have experienced, and the fierceness of his self-reliance in trying to work his way through them all by himself.</p>