phantombrain

Can anyone elaborate on the correlation between lecture attendance and college grades?

jspeed12

go to lecture=get good grades?
not sure what you mean here...

stradmom

I'm a teacher. Very few people who don't attend my [relatively small and interactive] classes tend to get good grades on exams or in the course. It might be different for one of those large lecture classes.

I don't have real numbers, but anecdotally, I can report that students who are actually engaged in the class and not texting/surfing etc also tend to do better.

Why do you ask?

jspeed12

^oh that's also true. I haven't been to my calc lecture in a little over a month because the prof has a super-thick accent and I still have an A in the class. but I haven't missed a chem lecture yet and I'm doing my best to maintain a B right now. all depends on the class and the amount of work you do outside of it

aldfig0

It depends on the class. Some professors are living, breathing textbooks (or at least structure their tests solely around the textbook). I got an A+ in a class where I skipped half the lectures because the tests only cover stuff in the textbook. This is not the case for other textbooks. After a few weeks into the class you should get a general feeling of whether skipping lecture would be detrimental to your grade or not.

boysx3

It depends on the class and the professor. A lot of professors do not review the readings in class...they may use them as a basis of the lecture, or lectures may be entirely unrelated to the readings, or they may be comparative to the readings.

A good number of professors "encourage" class attendance by having some exam questions based on things covered in lecture only, or by asking comparative questions of material covered in the lectures vs. that covered in the reading.

Another point to consider: professors are aware of who is in class, and who is not. When that strange face shows up at office hours, seeking help or seeking a favor? or sends an email seeking help or a favor, and the professor cannot put a face to the name on the email?

CalDud

My physics class I must attend because a huge portion of the grade is participation. I don't have to read the textbook this way if I pay attention. I get good grades in that class.

My math class is not worth attending because I don't learn anything from the professor I couldn't pick up from the textbook. Doing alright.

My stats class I go to all of the time now and everything seems pretty easy.

In general though, it depends on how disciplined you are and if you're willing to put in the work if you decide not to attend the class.

steellord321

Saw an interesting graph that showed there's a negative correlation...grades go up as attendance goes down. When broken down though, it's the opposite within class level. Seniors have the highest GPA yet attend less, probably cause taking classes in their major, but also senioritis and interviews makes them skip. Seniors who attend more get better grades than other seniors though and that's true across the board.

There's probably a total non correlation in some classes, the ones where they put up the lecture slides or plagiarize the textbook. Or it even pays to skip cause that's time that can be put to better use. I skip a couple lectures each week, has made no diff at all. Others if you don't attend you fail. Just gotta figure it out.