What to expect in college?

Student Lounge College Life
1

Is it much harder than High School?

  1. Do you take quizzes and tests or just exams?
  2. Do you have to do projects and group work?
  3. Is it difficult? For example, I took AP physics in high school, in college will my physics class be much harder? ( the basic physics course you need for med school)
  4. Is obtaining a > 3.7 GPA very difficult, even for someone who had a 4.0 GPA in high school?
  5. Do I get a lot of free time to study, to research, socialize etc or are classes all day long?
2
  1. Most classes have quizzes that count for very little of your grade (e.g. my calc class has 15 quizzes for 10% of your total grade)
  2. Depends on the class. No 200-person lecture will have projects or group work, but >50 it becomes more likely, and is almost certain for a ~20 person class.
  3. Overall yes, with varying degrees based on how much work you put in in high school. You'll have to pay attention, stay on top of work, and overall be more on top of things than you would have to in HS.
  4. Depends on the school and major; you can usually look up average GPA by school and broad major (STEM, social sciences, humanities, etc.)
  5. Most schools max you out at 18 credits (hours/week), which is about half of what high school is (my HS was 37.5 hrs/wk), and you get to choose your own schedule, so you'll have tons of time to yourself. Last semester I usually went from 9 - 3 every day with breaks between each class, but I hated it, so this semester I'm taking everything back to back in the afternoons. Mornings are for sleeping in or doing research, depending on how late I was up the night before.
3
  1. Quizzes, tests, graded homeworks, and sometimes class participation.
  2. Yes.
  3. What is difficult for one person might be easy for another. In general, the difficulty will be slightly higher but the pace will be much faster. For example, a class might meet three times per week for one hour each class where you will cover an entire chapter in the textbook each class.
  4. Some schools have grade inflation, some deflation. Obtaining a 3.7 GPA could be quite difficult.
  5. A full time student often spends only 15 hours in class during the week. The rest is up to you to prepare for classes, do projects, eat, sleep, socialize, ... . The biggest difficulty freshmen often face is learning to use that free time wisely, particularly in the absence of parental reminders.