REALLY WORRIED BECAUSE MY GRADES IN PRE-CAL WON’T BUDGE AND MY TEACHER HAS JUST CHANGED THE WEIGHT OF TESTS ON OUR GRADES. tests take up 60% of our grade and homework only costs VERY LITTLE. same with quizzes. He just so happened to change it this semester, which worries me FURTHER. Aside from that class, my GPA is around a 3.9-4.0. minus that class. Really freaking out because acceptance letters go out next month, and I’m scared my pre-cal grade will be the death of me. Specifically trying to get into Irvine, UCSD, (I can kiss UCLA goodbye), and or Davis.
UC’s provisonal admission requires an unweighted GPA of 3.0 for UCLA/UCB and weighted 3.0 for the rest of the UC’s along with no D’s or F’s. Yes, you could get rescinded so I would go to your teacher to see if you can do some extra credit, get a tutor and try to get that grade up to a C.
Looking at your previous posts, you barely passed this class last semester. What did you do different this semester to better learn the material?
I even tried staying after class to get extra help. i end up understanding the homework, but once the test comes the questions are far more complex than the homework assigned.
This may sound a bit harsh, but you’re going to be a university student in a few months and need to understand the expectations. At a UC or any large public there is help available if you seek it out, but for better or worse you’re going to be expected to take the 1st crack at solving your problems. This will apply regardless of whether we’re talking about roomate issues, not getting into a class you need, understanding the material in class, discovering your career interests, lining up internships, etc, etc, etc.
So how does this come into play here? After 1 semester it should not have been a surprise to you that the test was not just a regurgitation of the homework. So what did you do to try to fix it? Staying after class was a good start, but there is so much more you could have (and still can) do. There are workbooks such as the “pre-calculus problem solver” by REA that give hundreds and hundreds of worked examples, many of which I’d bet match the difficulty of the tests. In college, just so you know, if you are taking a class that involves working out solutions and you are only getting the answers after a lot of help, its up to you to recognize the mastery you need isn’t there and to work out more problems on your own initiative until you do understand. And this is what you should have been doing in this class.
Not only are there workbooks, but maybe your teacher isn’t the best in the world. No problem, because Coursera and iTunesU and dozens of websites have filmed lectures, practice material, etc. that you could watch to get another point of view. You could also ask your teacher for what else you could do; if she/he is helping you after class then they probably have a good idea of your weaknesses. You could form a study group with some friends and quiz each other. These are just a few thoughts off the top of my head, I bet you can come up with even more.
So point 1 is that you own the responsibility for learning the material in this class. You didn’t learn it, you didn’t take many of the steps to try and improve, and that speaks to your readiness to be a student at the University of California, at least as far as how I expect the adcoms will see it.
Now is the game over for you? I hope not. My hope is that the adcoms look at the rest of your record, look at this class, shrug a shoulder and say ‘kid isn’t good at math, oughta major in something non-technical’ and let it slide. But do I KNOW they will do that? No, I don’t, and neither does anyone else posting here. Asking random strangers what will happen is not the best approach, IMHO.
So what can you do about keeping your admission? That’s point 2, and again you own the responsibility here. If you’re lucky your GC attends the counselor conferences the UCs hold, has some pals they can check with, and makes some inquiries on your behalf. But if you’re like 99% of the kids in CA this isn’t your counselor. So you need to figure out how to handle it. Hoping it blows over, putting faith in someone that assures you it will be fine (called “confirmation bias”, BTW) isn’t the right way. Instead you need to get on the phone with the adcoms. Tell them what you’re trying. Tell them the new things you’re going to add on. Will this work? Dunno. This is the busy time for them, to put it mildly. Maybe the staffer answering the phone screens you out from talking to a real admin. But you need to try. As Davis wrote in its alumni magazine
Drop the class. Take it at a community college if you need it. Maybe it’s the instructor? Maybe the book? Maybe you are a 4.0 student and just stupid? No. You KNOW that is not it. It is the class. Yes they CAN rescind (whether they will is uncertain). Why put yourself through this torture? It is senseless.