This site: http://voice.vanderbilt.edu/
It’s where you can see the results for the course surveys. It’s kind of vague and not as good of a resource as ratemyprof, but I like to look at it on occasion, especially if the professor isn’t rated yet on ratemyprof.
Thanks, nice idea! (My kid doesn’t go to Vandy but I’m enjoying this discussion nonetheless as she is nominally pre-med).
So, is it better to have a 3.9 with a W or a 3.6 without a W?
Also, has anyone here gotten into medical school with a W?
Thank you!
Get the 3.6 without the W…Do not W if you will get a B grade…period! You want to show an upward trend and taking the B grade and improving to a solid B+ or A grade is better and perhaps more beneficial route to take. They look at trends and overall science GPA by the time of application. They won’t go to your first semester of college and go: “Uh oh! They got B in biology there and that is really bad despite strong performances in other cores and in upperlevels”.
My discussion of higher GPA with a W and lower GPA without a W was intended to be about cumulative GPA upon graduation. It should not be used as a rule to follow for semester GPA’s. What I meant was that getting a poor grade (C, D, or F) can permanently take a chunk out of your GPA. Although W’s should avoided and do not look great on the transcript, if there is a high chance that you will get a C/D/F which will really hurt your GPA, it is better to just take the W. This is because, as I said, a low GPA is a quantitative stat that will keep you out, and a W is a qualitative stat that won’t keep you out. Grades of B- and higher are not worth taking a W for, because they will not hurt your GPA enough to make them worth it, and retaking a class can throw off your schedule.
Based on this, I would agree with @bernie12 here. For this semester, just take the 3.6 with a B rather than 3.9 with a W. You are only a freshman, and can change your GPA very easily. A 3.6 is a great starting point, and you will have 7 more semesters to bring it up to a 3.8. Remember to judge yourself based on how you do based on the average; a C is only when you are below the class average, not when the number is numerically a C.
The only situation where I would still advise a drop is if it is for mental health reasons. You have said you are not sleeping or eating, and I imagine if you are limiting basic necessities you are probably not enjoying your life either. A frenetic, finals week like pace can be maintained for a few weeks, but not for a whole semester. If you are going hard 24/7 all semester and hating your life, you will burn out at the end, and all of your grades will most likely be lower than expected. So if you stay in the class, just make sure to consider if you can maintain the pace you are at now for the rest of the semester.
@fdgjfg Are the dropped grades because you just hate studying or something else?
I’ve heard about people burning out, so would you know how to avoid it or recognize it?
Self control and self discipline are finite resources, which is a hypothesis that has actually been confirmed by psychological studies. Burn out happens when people ask too much of themselves academically or extracurricularly. I always feel it coming on during the last two weeks of school when you have a heavy schedule; there is so much to do in so little time that every moment of consciousness is almost painful due to the stress and anxiety levels. Luckily it’s only two weeks and you get break right after.
I’ve experienced it during the normal semester, and for me it is the point where you move beyond working hard into the realm of hating life. It is usually when you start to have trashed self esteem and a persistent feeling of hopelessness and inevitable failure. While you may have been able to maintain solid grades early in the semester, you end up blowing up at finals time when you start losing the ability to concentrate and the constant poor nutrition and sleep deprivation catch up to you. You end up procrastinating, having really unproductive study time, and having episodes that seem similar to panic attacks while taking high stakes tests or finals.
I would say that you recognize it with that constant feeling of malaise, and the precarious sense that you are barely scraping by and the wheels could come off at any time. That is the time that I would advise dropping the problem class, because when you feel like this, it is not hard to end up completely collapsing later and getting a horrible grade like a D or F. To avoid burn out, schedule conservatively and avoid doubling up on hard classes, especially those with time eater labs (bio/orgo/gen chem). Also, make sure that there is some fun or enjoyable aspect of your life at all times. For example, I never skip the gym no matter how busy I am because I find it relaxing and I would go crazy without it.
Does this answer your first question? I am a bit confused about what you are asking.
My burnout year was sophomore year and it was like that. I have no problem doubling or even tripling up afterwards (and was successful freshman year) yet there were family issues that developed early sophomore year and yet I kept a schedule that was overly ambitious…1st semester was something crazy like: advanced inorganic, psychobiology (with the most difficult instructor. That plus research participation requirement didn’t help), Arab-Israeli Conflict (ridiculous reading load and then I got sick near the end of the semester and then since there was about 3-400 pages of reading a week associated with the course, after my sick week was over, I had to cram like 800 pages before starting a paper), calc. based physics (this was “alright”), and calculus (this was okay too but I should have done better)…I pretty much burnt out by the middle of the semester after receiving lots of bad news from home and getting not great results on the exams I took already…I was basically ready to give up. I started bouncing back junior year, but that year negatively affected my confidence a lot…to the point every exam was a self-doubt fest. Even if I knew the answers or approach, I would assume it’s wrong and then do something else (like I took a graduate bio-organic class and on the first exam, I was asked to explain mechanistically how a drug inhibits an specific enzyme. I instictively knew the answer…literally drew a circle around the part of the inhibitor I thought was relevant in the mechanism and then went forward and drew the mechanism for a less relevant alternative…and of course the one I circled is the one I should have pursued). Oh well, I got over it. It wasn’t the fault of the courses or the school because I actually performed very well in several very difficult classes freshman year, junior, and senior year (sophomore had only a couple of bright spots), so I was clearly capable but inconsistencies came from me not measuring and paying attention to my mental state at the time and adjusting my schedule accordingly. I indeed enjoyed the challenge, but could have enjoyed the instruction more if all of me was there. Either way…I’m over it and my training is really benefiting me in my current graduate coursework and research. It seems like I get good grades with 1/2 or less the effort of others and also do it more efficiently and enjoy it much more (but that’s partially from being outside of school for a year or 2…I always read and kept up with science but sharing my interests with others in non-formal and formal settings makes it a much richer experience).
you are getting some very thoughtful advice from students here. please know that many people graduate with honors who have a W on their transcript (including my kid). Pay respect to your mental and physical health and know that many students have experiences where one or the other goes flooey. You are human. Maturity like Bernie has described takes years and gives you more bounce and more of a foundation. Your brain is still in process at 19 or 20 or later! Yes, work hard. Sacrifice some of your needs at times for school work. Treat Vandy like it is your job. I totally agree that if you can nail a B just finish it out and do NOT worry at all. There are a hundred reasons that Vandy students take a W or Repeat a class. Most have to do with health, family issues, study skills, discipline and focus and flat out personal growth and brain growth.
What would you tell your son or daughter right now? Take the long view whatever you decide. Life is sweet and you are a very very able person even if you stumble occasionally. It is not a big deal. You will right your ship and there is time to do so. Treat yourself the way you would advise your own hard working 19 year old.
Small point, but a W is not actually used when computing GPA, so it’s not like it’s an anomaly for someone graduate with honors if they have a W on their transccripts.
But yes, everything else Faline said is correct.
Repeating a class at Vandy is a different story. It is a privilege not offered at many institutions but it is offered at Vandy if you go through protocol and meey with your advisor/major advisor. Your new grade is in your GPA. The old grade is not in it. However both the old and new grade appear on your transcript for viewing for those instances where anyone cares to look. More than fair and used more than you might think. Vandy doesn’t want to “wash out” students who have stumbled for various reasons, many too obvious and too common to mention.
Wow, Vandy is that nice…most schools (including mine) did the annoying averaging of the grade. That sucks when say, a D or F goes to an A. You still get no higher than a C+ in that case.
I mean, it doesn’t really matter in terms of med school applications. AMCAS still requires you to put in every grade you ever got in college.
I do not agree, derp125. Son opted to do Vandy summer school after a withdrawal to do his science course. Many premeds were there knocking out Physics or upping a grade in a major basic course requirement. (a big negative for summer school is $$). We lost money on remedial paths our sons took (repeat one course each). But I feel our sons were so “perfect” in high school (high school is so much more stifling and intense than was the norm in my day) and didn’t need to be punished for their first errors.
Some people actually do not feel a vocation for medicine till later…why lose them? There are plenty of gifted physicians who were immature at age 20 and blew a semester or a year of study through poor study skills. Also, students get sick. (both my sons got mono by second year). Parents divorce and people get depressed. Students who hated Vandy as freshman adjust and dig in later. There are many humane reasons why you want to demonstrate mastery of Bio Physics or Chem and not stick with a C. Usually you will include a sentence about why you repeated a course, no matter how dumb a reason. Everyone knows 19 and 20 year olds are in flux and not mature. Doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot of talent and perhaps a true vocation in medicine. Businesses often ask to see your Calc grade. Perhaps it would behoove you to redo Calc if your aspirations go in that direction so you can prove you mastered/aced Calculus in job interviews. Graduate schools of other kinds want high scores in Stats. You would be surprised how many Vandy students arrive without any APs in that subject or come from high schools with lousy AP instruction (our home high school students seldom made above 2s). It took a year for our guys to step up their rote learning games to compare favorably with students who had good AP instruction. My son started with 3 APs. His roommate had 11 APs. Another friend who is at Duke Med got permission to do Physics at home in Chicago at Northwestern one summer. many roads to meet the standards.
@daisy246 just curious - do you have an update? Are things going any better in your premed classes?
Hi my D is freshman pre-med or neuroscience PhD. Doing well in gen chem. has almost an A. Question re next semester math. Would she be ok to take math1100, the calc overview? Or does she absolutely need math1200/1220 for premed. She’d like the overview. She heard its fine for neuroscience but iffy for premed.
I attended a top state u with notorious weed out classes. My smart friends (the ones who are all doctors now) all took as many calc, physics, chem, and bio classes at the local CC or during the summer at schools near their homes. They didn’t always get credit at our school for the classes but they always got As and they got into med school.
Math1100 will be fine for most schools, because most schools don’t have a calculus requirement. Math 1100 + some kind of statistics class would be fine for these schools.
Some selective top 20 med schools require at least one semester of calculus, and others require two semesters. However, these requirements are iffy, and are not followed as a rule. A great applicant won’t be kept out for not having the class, unlike with the main pre reqs (like bio or orgo). Also, seems rather silly to base all your decisions around the preferences of schools that accept either 1 or 0 Vanderbilt students each year.
I would say that the safest option would be: if she is experienced with calculus (taken AP and gotten a 4 or 5) to take the first semester of either 1200 or 1300, whatever is easier. If she is not experienced with calculus, math 1100 would probably be fine. Another option is to take calculus over the summer at a local university, where it will be much easier.
@fdgjfg do all med schools with a calc requirement want some kind of calc course? I wanted to use my ap credits and then use a stats equivalent instead (econ stats). From what I have seen, most med schools accept the ap credits without asking for an upper level equivalent if a stats course is taken. I haven’t been able to do extensive research though
Yes, that will be fine. Looking at Harvard med’s admission page: https://hms.harvard.edu/departments/admissions/applying/requirements-admission
They accept the AP calc credit + stats (“Advanced placement calculus credits may satisfy the calculus component of this requirement (Calculus AB and/or Calculus BC).”).
They also seem very flexible about the mathematics requirement in general, writing that: " Rather than increasing the one year devoted to mathematics preparation, the one-year effort should be more relevant to biology and medicine than the formerly required, traditional, one-year calculus course. Flexibility will be welcome in meeting these requirements (e.g., a semester course in calculus that covers derivatives and integration and a semester course in statistics; a calculus-based physics course and another science course that includes a firm grounding in biostatistics; or, preferably, a unified two-semester course that covers important, biologically relevant concepts in calculus and statistics)."
Harvard’s math requirements have been known to be more demanding than those of other schools, so they are a reasonable benchmark.