Dam Its Johnny

^ dhl3 whats your major?

dhl3

Business Economics

disengage

hey dhl,

for business econ what do you think i should do

go to a lower tier UC school like UCI and dominate over there with a rly high GPA

or take ur chances at UCLA and try to perform well and risk a lower GPA but I guess have a chance for better recruitment?

i would say i am big time slacker eventhough I performed really well at JC, but I am starting to have doubts of whether I will realistically be able to handle UCLA

let me know

Ektaylor

@dhl,

Why not study hard day and night 5-6 days a week, that's worked for me. I found myself last semester, taking 7 classes at a CC, studying 30-40 hours a week; I am sure that there are some classes at CC which have been "dumbed down" to a level where crash studying is an option, but staying on top of school work (be it reading, writing papers, or grinding through countless problems sets in statistics) uniformly provides a starkly better method to both succeed and to internalize the information learned. From what I have seen, studying for the sheer reason of regurgitation or application on an exam translates to forgetting that material later on. Crash studying seems to be academic laziness coupled with dishonesty; if one forgets what he has learned, his degree is only a facade.

Though, I may be misinterpreting what you meant.

dhl3

Ektaylor, pretty much everyone at UCLA studies like you. As a matter of fact, starting a week before midterm/finals week, you'll definitely see that there are lot less activities going on in the campus, and the library will be full. People literally bring pillows and blankets and live in the library for a full week (well except shower) during the finals week.

The difference between CC and UCLA (and any other UC's i'm sure) is that at CC, you are one of the very few that actually studies that hardcore and you are at advantage compared to other "slackers" or whatever you wanna call. At UC, studying like you is THE NORM. Basically, imagine you competing against yourself, except there are more than 100 (one of my class has 400 people) of you, and the prof. makes curve based on that.

alansda

Competing against myself? Then I would try really hard to beat myself and end up screwing myself...

Ektaylor

I am not contending the difference between a CC and a UC --I'm not that naive. What I was responding to was your mention of 'starting to study,' which suggests postponing work, letting it accumulate.

dhl3

Honestly, whether you start studying early (the first day of lecture) or later on depends on you and the courseload.

This is what I tend to do (based on 4 courses/quarter):

Week 1: Enjoy the opportunity to meet people and go to the club meetings you are part of. Don't really study, noone does. Unless you have Professor Ravetch for Accounting class (you'll know what I'm talking about once you attend UCLA)
Week 2: 2-3 hour/day 4 days a week for studying + Review the past lecture materials, do homework, write essays, start those projects.
Week 3: For some South Campus Majors (Math, Science, Engineering) and Econ majors, this tend to be a week before the midterm week (which tend to take place anytime between week 4 - 6). 3-5 hours/5 days a week for studying + finish the projects, finish the homework, etc.

Midterm Week: No-Life Week for me pretty much.
Get up, go to class, eat, then go straight to library, spend pretty much all day there studying, then sleep. This goes on for a whole week (or two if your midterm is spread out).

You do this, you will get a B.

Maybe you'd think this is cramming also, but as a student who goes to UCLA, I'd say I'm a fair representation of what typical students do at UCLA.

Anyway, I'm not trying to argue with you which study method is the most efficient. The point I'm trying to make here is that while I was at CC, I heard from lots of transfers that UCLA (or Cal) is not much harder than CC, and I'm just trying to say that I really regret taking their words as facts and taking my ego at UCLA just to get crashed during my first quarter here. In CC, my GPA was fairly high (3.85) and I was top 3 students in most of my classes. My first quarter in UCLA, I ended up with 3.1, which is not horribly bad but far below what I had in mind. I'm not saying this to brag but to make a point that if you are a very successfuly student at CC and set standard high for yourself at UCLA (which I did before my first UCLA quarter started), then you will undoubtely be crushed and will only end up laughing at yourself for thinking so highly of your ability. And maybe I'll be one of the few here to say that UCLA is at least dozen times harder than CC (if you are econ, that is).

Ektaylor

Yea, I completely agree with your observances of the transitional period, and the incline in work, between a CC and UC. And, I will admit, the way I study is many times overkill for my classes (one time giving a 45 minute presentation on urbanization, while everyone else gave a 5 minute presentation ranging from otters to their favorite type of car --not trying to brag, just illuminating the difference in student effort at CC), but I find the method I currently employ much better and less stressful than crashing, which sometimes was requisite given the amount of work 7 classes brought. Also, I don't have any experience with the quarter system, so I cannot comment on the immediacy of studying it brings.

And my major is polisci --gladly not econ, haha.

alansda

Ektaylor: So your classmates take ~5 minutes for a presentation, and you take 45 minutes? They must hate you! LOL

Ektaylor

Yea, I did it on purpose tho; the class was English 1A, which is required for everyone UC or CSU, and thereby attracted an interesting group of students which all seemed to think since they caught this morning's headlines on foxnews, they were adequately informed --which is like nails on a chalkboard for me (especially due to my major). And it didn't help that the discussions always wound up focused on topical issues and dumbed down abstractions of intricate world matters (think arm chair general), which then implanted a certain false sense of acumen in the fresh-out-of-highschool-students.

Thomas_

I haven't transfered yet, but I'm living 5 minutes away from UCLA, in the UCLA dorms, and I'm studying and living together with 80% UCLA students. I absolutely haven't made the same experiences as dhl3. What you are saying may be true for Econ majors (and maybe only Econ), but certainly not for all other majors. And let's be honest, Econ/Business classes at a CC are a joke anyway, maybe that's why it seem so much harder to you.

Some people are studying ONLY during midterms/finals week and they still get good grades. The average study time here seems to be much less than mine (I'm an engineering major and taking 20units only math/physics) and the one of Ektaylor. Hell, the average study time is less than 1/3 of mine.

So, please don't generalize. I'm not saying that you are wrong regarding Econ, but you are definitely wrong when you start talking about all majors in general.

dhl3

Wasn't generalizing. Just giving people what to expect once they transfer. And seriously, average study time = 1/3 of cc student's? Either your friends are taking some BS class with some easy prof, or you are overkilling the cc studyload.

I haven't met anyone here that actually devoted less time studying than I was when I was in CC. The study time i put in when I was at CC is expected to be the bare minimum to PASS the class here.

dragondawg

Ektaylor, do you or did you go to PCC?

Ektaylor

No, I go to Cuesta College in SLO.