It is typical to see more than 30-40% of students to drop out of first engineering class. IIRC, about 60% of my classmates dropped out of ChE301 (introductory ChE) class.
Thanks for replies guys. I would say I’m extremely motivated, and I get concepts without too much difficulty. I’m taking AP Physics C and Calc AB and I have a 97 and 99 respectively in those classes. My physics teacher is notoriously difficult and his class is considered one of the hardest at my school. I know he’s preparing me very well. I hope this is a good sign for next year.
My biggest concerns are probably time management and the curve. I take forever on tests and with hw; I’m always last to finish. I didn’t take many APs either. Also the idea that the prof might ration grades such that I can do fairly well on a test and still get a low grade because my classmates did better is a bit frightening.
In my experience in both undergraduate and graduate studies, I can’t say that I ever received a grade that I didn’t deserve due to a curve. I think the intersection of the set of all people that tell horror stories about curved grades and the set of students who think they performed better than they really did is fairly large.
Also, it’s great that you are doing well at high school AP classes, but remember that the average college course is going to move at approximately twice that rate. The entire content of AP Calculus AB is covered in a little bit under a semester at most colleges as opposed to a year in the AP sequence.
Also, I was one of those people who grasped concepts rather quickly in high school. Be careful because, for me at least, that meant I had substandard study habits when starting college. I had some rather large adjustments to make in that aspect of my life. Luckily I was enthusiastic about my studies so it wasn’t too hard to get motivated to do it (except in my circuits class).
Most professors, in my experience, won’t curve against a class. Meaning, if the average is high, they won’t make it more difficult to get an A. Instead, they won’t curve at all, leaving the normal grade distribution. That being said, I did have a professor that curved the class so that a 93 was a threshold for an A- in a class, instead of a 90, because he did a real curve and the average of the class was high. In my experience, though, that’s the exception, rather than the rule. Most professors want students to do well, and if everyone gets A’s and B’s, then they’re okay with it. Typically, the curve will help, rather than hurt, except for the occasional professor that does otherwise.
Curve or not, it is up to the professors and course coordinator. For small classes, it would be hard to curve anyway. For large classes, one may expect the student body to be similar to other sessions or previous classes that curving would make the grade consistent. You know the exam questions may different from year to year and it may easier or more difficult to get high score. Nevertheless, there are also classes that posted the grade requirement upfront (like in high school).