So I’m a student of the UC system and went to study abroad in HKU through the EAP system. The experience was great and I loved my time there but I severely underestimated the difficulty of the courses there. In general I’m a person that likes to plan things early because I know I will definitely mess up later on. That preparation would then give me something to fall back on. In high school, I took 10 AP courses and as much Community College Courses as I could take and managed to get into college with about 83 credits (out of 180). But because of my major’s layout, I still had to spend at least 3 years to graduate. I was really happy about this because it meant 1 year less tuition as my credits effectively allowed me to “skip” my freshman year. Not only that, I realized that I had enough credits for me to go study aboard (this year) and make it back in time to graduate within 3 years(assuming I transfer my courses back successful of course)! Everything seemed great. My GPA was >3, I was a year ahead of everyone in my grade and got to experience studying abroad.
Currently it is the end of my second year. I just finished studying at HKU and man my grades are absolutely terrible. I look at it and think, this literally could be the turning point from a really good future to a terrible one. I didn’t exactly fail anything but I think I had about 4 D’s and a few C’s and 0 A’s. I heard it was difficult and yes it was harder than the US system but the problem was mostly personal. Either way, my concern as of this moment is that if my courses were to successfully transfer over, I will have effectively destroyed my GPA and most chances at getting into a good grad school.
Now, before I go hang my head in shame, I wanted to see if I could do some decent damage control. Would it be possible for me to literally throw this year away? As in, eliminate it as if it never existed? Just as any community college course, as long as you don’t send in the transcript, wouldn’t the university simply treat it as if it never existed? Because even if I do, I will simply go back the the “normal” 4 year system instead which is absolutely fine with me, as my GPA is still intact. Will the EAP/UC system force me to submit transcripts and make it count towards my GPA?
Now that reality is out of the way, for some theorycrafting. If the above method works and I was able to extend my time to 4 years rather than 3 by giving up my study abroad year, would that be preferential as opposed to taking the bad GPA and forcing the 3 years graduation. Because at the very least with the latter scenario, at least I will be able to say that I was able to graduate in 3 years despite my subpar GPA. Would grad schools care more about that or a 4 year student that is normal in every way(decent GPA, same graduate time, study abroad, etc.)? I’m slightly afraid that a worst case scenario is that I will have to both submit my study abroad work thus destroying my GPA in the process AS WELL AS being forced to complete the 4 years due to my low grades not being able to count for credit. Though this is highly unlikely, it still is quite frightening to figure out. Could someone please help me for what I am supposed to do for the next year? Thank you in advance.
P.S. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m highly embarrassed my the situation which admittedly was entirely my fault. I don’t feel comfortable sharing with my particular school’s advisors as they seem to recognize me. Is there also a way that I can contact either my school or EAP and ask such specific questions anonymously?