Hi, my son is a freshman at Duke. He is not doing great in one of his courses. He had never been exposed to that subject area and is now struggling with it. He is unable to find a peer tutor and is considering dropping it. Anyone has any experience with withdrawal from a course? I’m really worried about the repercussion it may have. Any insight will be helpful.
I was an undergrad many years ago at a different highly ranked university. I took one very tough class with a very bad professor. It was basically hopeless. I eventually dropped it and took a W. This was a great relief and freed up quite a bit of time for my other classes.
I never noticed any problem relating to this, other than the need to catch up by taking an extra class at a different time. I still got into some very good graduate schools. In my case the class that I had to drop was not required for anything – it was in my major but I was able to replace it with a different class also in my major that I took at a later time.
Sometimes this just happens. Students can catch up either by taking an extra class at a different time, by taking a class or two over the summer (either at the same university or on exchange elsewhere), or of course many students start university with some AP credits and can drop a class without falling behind.
It is a good idea to be aware of whether or not dropping this would cause an issue wrt prerequisites for classes that he intends to take next semester and next year.
Thanks for the quick reply. He does not intend to major in it. He took it to try something different that he had never studied before. (I think that this was offered as a suggestion by advisors)
Need to make sure that he will still be a full time student.