Hi everybody! I’m new here. Completely new. Although I HAVE read through threads on this site over the years.
Anyways, I’ll get to the point. I’ve just spent the past 6 hours trying to look through my options and googling questions about poor GPAs.
I’m failing my Organic Chemistry class for the 2nd time. I’m also failing my Physics 2 class a second time. For both classes, I started off really badly, but for my recent exams, I was able to get 80’s and up. Unfortunately, 2 good lecture exam grades out of 4 doesn’t do much for my overall grade and there’s a policy that if I don’t have a passing lecture grade, the homework grades, lab grades and recitation grades don’t count.
I’ve already failed a couple other classes over the years, which I’ve re-taken and gotten B’s and C’s in. There are some classes I have D’s in as well. My GPA is down to a 2.3 right now, and I’m pretty sure the F from Physics and Orgo are going to bring me down to less than 2.0.
I’ve been struggling with school in general for the past few years because of family issues, but luckily my home situation has improved a lot these past 2 months (which helped me do better on my recent exams). Today I got an email from my Orgo lecture professor letting me know that I was failing lecture and essentially, the whole course. I might even be put on probation due to these two F’s (I don’t know yet). If I don’t get put on probation, should I think about changing majors?
It would be kind of hard to do with my current 2.3 GPA since a lot of the other majors require 2.5 and up. I thought I could maybe transfer to a community college (which accepts lower GPA’s) and work my GPA back up to a 3.0 or higher and then transfer back to my current college but with a different major. This would take a lot longer to do essentially, but at this point, I’m open to any decent options.
Would transferring to a community college reset my GPA to 0.0? Will I even be able to transfer, since I’m technically a junior already? Will changing my major to something completely different from what I’m doing now reset my GPA (ex: science major to history major)?
Or should I just suck it up, stay in my major, retake those classes and try my best? I have about 8-10 classes left to take until I can graduate, including the ones I’ve failed.
One of the main reasons I even thought about transferring was because I hope and plan to apply to grad school (Masters) and I’m worried I’ll be rejected from everything. Because of my low GPA, I plan to apply to any and all colleges/universities that would take my low GPA.
I know I can turn myself around b/c I’ll only have my part-time job and my studies to focus on (instead of also having family issues). Starting next semester, I’ll be a part-time student and only taking 2 classes max (b/c that’s all I can pay for). I want to start fresh in the Fall, but my GPA is haunting me.
Do you guys have any good advice or thoughts? Even any helpful tips would be good, so just throw them my way.
Apologies for the essay 
You have been struggling in college for quite some time. What help have you sought and received from the counseling center and the tutoring center? Have you haunted your professor’s office hours, and worked intenseively with the teaching assistants an laboratory instructors? If you have not taken those steps, why not? If you have taken them, but you still are not mastering the material, is there anything else you can change so that you will be able to do well in these classes?
You need to meet with your professors and find out if there is any way at all you can pass the classes. For example, can you take an Incomplete this term, and re-do some of the work over the summer?
You also need to meet with your advisor, and talk about your options. Talk about why you chose this major, and why you think you would like to continue in it. Find out what job options you will have graduating with your projected GPA. Discuss majors that would be reasonable to transfer into, and what careers those majors could lead to. Ask about grad school admission. Is grad school necessary for your careeer goal? Get help with considering all of your options.
Your GPA doesn’t “reset” if you change majors. In addition, when you apply to grad school, they look at your GPA across all of your colleges.
You can transfer to a community college. Many of your credits won’t transfer, mainly because the classes required/offered by a cc are different from those at a uni. But you absolutely can transfer there. If you do, I’d strongly recommend that you get your associates there, then transfer. Use the cc to boost your overall GPA. You can get into a cc. The real issue may be financial aid. You only have aid eligibility for an associates for up to 90 credits attempted (including retakes and Fs). You’d need to make sure you can graduate before you hit that 90. If you see, even now, that you cannot, then don’t transfer to a cc. You’ll run out of aid before you graduate.
What can work for some grad schools is if you can show a clear break between old, poor grades and new, good grades. But you’d need to do well from this point on.
I would suggest that you consider changing your major to something you can do well in. You say you’re in the sciences now. You won’t get into a grad science program with a GPA in the 2’s, so if your future career depends on you going to grad school, you need to find a different career or path. If you like history and would do well in it, it’s worth considering.
But no matter what you major in, gain career related work experience while you study, so you can get a job when you graduate. With a GPA that’s low, you want to boost the rest of your resume and make it really attractive to employers, and you can do that via work experience.
In order to get a job out of college, more important than a Masters would be to get an internship. In fact getting an internship now while your in college is vital.
Once you have some work experience, if you absolutely feel you need a Masters’s you can go back to school after a couple of years.
but very important thing you left out is your major.