<p>I am a student at an Ivy league school in an Applied Physics program with two semesters after the current one left in my BS.
My issue is that I feel like I’m in this for all the wrong reasons, and I am convinced this is not what I want to do for a living. I find the work very painful, and get poor grades (my CGPA is 2.47). This is doubly frustrating because I’m wasting time doing something I know I don’t want to do, when I could be spending it exploring things I’m actually interested in.
On the other hand, I have practically a full ride at this school, a deal that can’t be matched anywhere else. On top of that, I’m almost finished.
Part of me wants to drop to my local public school, start exploring other subjects, and try to get most of my credits transferred so I could do maybe a double major in Physics and something else. However, I’m worried that this will disgrace me, and disappoint my mother and family (I know, I’ve become a snob). I don’t know how to weigh these various components. Is it worth doing what you want, no matter the cost? Or better to have patience and finish what I started?</p>
<p>If you don’t think you’re getting anything out of your current education, then I don’t see why you should stay. I knew someone close who did something similar. She went to Cornell as an engineering major, but it became too hard for her. After two years, she came back to her hometown and study there. She still lead a successful life, eventually heading off to medical school.</p>
<p>When do you want to stop sprinting full-tilt in the wrong direction? Now, when you can change things and aren’t in the thick of “real life” yet, or later when you’re in an established career that you despise?</p>
<p>Well, if you’re almost finished, then you might as well finish it. You don’t have to pursue a career in that field. Think of it this way: you’re getting a name-brand degree at, as you said, practically no cost, and you should be able to leverage that degree into a job in a field that you do like. I know plenty of engineering majors who don’t work as engineers.</p>
<p>My opinion, since you are getting a free ride at a good school you should just finish out your degree there. There’s no reason why you have to persue a career in engineering just because you have a degree in it.</p>
<p>I hadn’t realized when I posted the first time that you were almost done, and that you had a (nearly) free ride.</p>
<p>I do, however, know how incredibly difficult (and DAMAGING!) it can be to stay in a place that puts you in a state of soul-sucking misery, and nothing is worth enduring that.</p>
<p>If this is just a matter of figuring out whether or not you want to pursue applied physics in the future, then seek some help and support to finish your degree, and then take a year or two off doing TFA or Peace Corps or volunteer work or generally figuring out what it is you want to do with your life. Something like applied physics is a good segue into many, many other fields.</p>
<p>If this is, however, a matter of your current situation being too incredibly painful to continue, then I’d seek immediate help. Go to the counseling center, see if they can help you find some answers as to what you want to do with your life, so you can get some motivation to get you through this degree with a greater goal in mind. Go to your professors and TAs and see if they’ll help you answer your questions and review the material so you can pull your grades up. See if you can get things to be better… But if you can’t, then you seriously need to consider doing something else and changing direction after this semester.</p>
<p>If you think nothing is so bad that you can’t just tough it out and endure it for a full year without it changing you, that’s unfortunately wrong. If it’s that bad, and if you stay, you’ll regret it just the same as others might think you’ll regret it if you leave.</p>
<p>To the OP: I still say that you should gut it out. You’re in an Ivy, so it shouldn’t be that hard to get a passing grade in your remaining classes, especially if you’re past the weeders, which should be the case if, like you said, you’re almost done. Granted, it’s hard to get good grades, but at this point, you don’t really care about that because you won’t be able to change your cumulative GPA by much anyway. </p>
<p>If it helps you, you can simply adopt the attitude that, from this point, your engineering students are like a job that you do from 9-5 that you will have to put up with for only a little while longer. Let’s face it: most Americans hold boring jobs that they don’t really like. The janitor who cleans the office and washes the bathroom - I’m sure he doesn’t really like the job; he’s just doing it to pay the bills. I’ve held jobs like that. Hence, if you can just put up with it for a little while longer, you will have an Ivy degree and then you can switch careers to something you like better. </p>
<p>But, like aibarr said, if you don’t think you can do that, then maybe you should just withdraw and do something else for awhile and then perhaps come back to finish your degree later. I know of a guy who withdrew from school for several months in order to drive around North America in a naturalistic and spiritual journey similar to an ‘Into the Wild’ journey (but without dying of starvation in Alaska). He took odd jobs wherever he could find them, i.e. bartending in Mexico, doing farm work in the Midwest, etc. He came back to school refreshed and with a new outlook on life. Other people have withdrawn from school to try out new career opportunities: starting a rock band, moving to Los Angeles to try to become actors, joined startup firms, etc. Some of them came back to school with renewed attitudes. Some of them didn’t (i.e. the guys who became millionaires from their startup certainly didn’t).</p>
<p>I’m with Sakky, stick it out. An engineering degree from an Ivy league is probably worth more in a non-engineering position anyway. I would finish the degree and then pursue what it is you want to do in a more professional, paying, situation. A 2.5 isn’t OMG THIS GUY IS STUPID bad, it’s actually half way decent, and, if you stick it will show a lot of clout on a personal basis. However, if I see a 2.5 or 2.7 in another major (which you will probably have upon graduation if you switch degrees) I would probably wonder what you were doing at college.</p>
<p>The 9-5 thing is a good way to treat it. I did this for the last 2 years of my schooling, mainly because I need to bring my grades up. I would schedule an 8am or earlier class and wouldn’t leave campus until 5pm or I was done studying. I figured if I didn’t have anything to do I wasn’t trying hard enough. I did really well my last couple of years, and took a couple of psyche classes since they were offered at 8am.</p>
<p>It depends on how you feel about it. If you can stick it out, then do so. If you’re so miserable that it’s taking a toll on your non-academic life, then you should get out regardless of the cost.</p>
<p>Is it possible to change your major, possibly making up some courses over this summer and possibly next summer to catch up? Fin Aid may cover that but it might not cover a 5th year. Look into it. Ivies tend to be pretty generous.</p>
<p>The situation would be different if he had more than a year to go AND if he was actually paying for his education. A free ride to an ivy school and he’s first realizing he’s miserable in his senior year? Sounds like he’s going through late stages of regret that many students go through, imagining what they could have done instead of what they are doing now and thinking they would be happier. </p>
<p>One year of free college then you get an Ivy league engineering degree. I’d say suck it up and finish school and if you’re still unhappy then just find a job in a different field. Your degree doesn’t require you to get a job related to it.</p>
<p>I agree with the last post. Should you want to pursue something completely different, law or medicine, just as two examples, an engineering degree would make you extremely competitive and allow you to contribute in unusual ways.</p>
<p>Unless you are completely miserable, this could be a really valuable degree to have. And I think it’s fairly routine that GPA’s in engineering are lower than other GPA’s. I certainly know this is true for my nephew at Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>Is it even possible to get to grad school GPAs less then 3.0? I know it’s from an Ivy League, but can he/she jump into a decent graduate program still with those GPA?</p>
<p>it’s possible, probably not a good one, stick it out, you can still raise that GPA, I had nearly 4.0s for the last 3 semesters, while having similar GPA as you did for the first couple of years, almost graduated cum laude.</p>
<p>When I was in a similar situation, between my junior and senior years, I asked a lot of people for advice, and read some books that I hoped would give me some insight into why I was having academic problems. Someone who I worked for who had actually dropped out of school (and regretted never going back) convinced me to stay. Ironically, one of his reasons for wishing he hadn’t left school was the opportunity for promotions, salary raises, etc. But AFAIK, he’s never been unemployed, and has had reasonable career advancement, whereas I, who eventually not only got a BS but a MS, have been laid off twice. Go figure.</p>
<p>If you really don’t want to do applied physics any more, you probably shouldn’t, but you should probably try to figure out what you want to do and how to start doing that, so as not to fall into a rut. OTOH, it could be that you are having academic problems because you lack background and/or study skills that other students have (although you may not realize this - I did not at the time). In this case talking to professors and other students who are having more success may help. It also may help to just take some time off just to give yourself a break and focus on some other things. After some time away from school, you may be able to approach it with renewed energy and enthusiasm.</p>
<p>WRT grad schools, there are some that will take any student as long as he or she has a bachelor’s degree. The schools may require that some undergraduate classes be retaken, however. Rather than worrying about how competitive the schools are (in terms of applicants), try to find out whether these schools will provide you with the educational background you need to do what you want.</p>