Denied from every college

tommytim
Tue, 30 Apr 2019 13:19:53 +0000

Please don’t just give up now. I honestly think you need to change your major. I don’t think you’re passionate enough about your current one.

I’m a 27 year old student - soon to be 28- and I will be attending a UC in the fall. I was accepted into 5 UCs, waitlisted at 2 (I only applied to 7 UCs), and was also accepted into Cal Poly SLO, SFSU, Sac State, and CSU East Bay.

Several years ago, I went to an OOS university and I failed every class. I did no work whatsoever while there. My GPA was literally 0.9. I came back home and went to community college for several unfocused years. I withdrew from classes, I stopped going to classes and neglected to withdraw, there were many quarters where all I did was PE or extracurricular courses like guitar, dance, etc. I was a horrible student. I was unfocused. I unfortunately have all of this in my record…

Anyways, this year I finally applied to these schools with a 3.27 from one cc and a 3.15 (?) from the other…when I applied I actually said to someone “I don’t know what will happen - I may not get into any”. I’ve been surprised by the number of acceptances I’ve received…I retook so many classes and a few I retook more than once…

However, in the last couple of years, I’ve been far more driven. Something happened one summer…I was stuck miserably at home for weeks with a broken bone and limited activity and met a healthcare professional that made me consider their career path. I had Organic Chemistry that year and earned As throughout it -surprising myself- and further pushing me as a student. Students in my class thought I was smart, my professor had so much faith in me that she ended up asking me to grade papers for her and tutor her students after I’d finished that year with her…and I always thought, if only she knew about my academic past…I’m a bio major and have done well in Bio this year - a professor a couple quarters back straight out offered to write me a letter of recommendation… This is all after I figured out what I wanted to do and needed to be doing.

I agree with a previous person. It’s not that you’re not intelligent - it sounds as though it could be the depression or perhaps a bit of a learning disability. In my past, I wanted to do well, but I never felt like doing anything…I suspect that something might have been holding me back. You seem to be in a similar situation. You want to do well but something is holding you back. I overcame it with interest in a subject…but I wonder if I would have found even more success if I had used the school’s resources and found out what it was that was holding me back…

It’s ok to be at cc for several years. It happens to a lot of people. Keep at it and get your GPA to a 3.0. You’ll get in. Meanwhile, you should expose yourself to a variety of careers to see if you can find something interesting enough to drive you…actually go out and talk to people about their careers and see them at work. Maybe you’ll find that you like studying human behavior, you like teaching or you like helping elderly people, etc…A clear goal helps tremendously.

Don’t just give up. You’ll probably hate where you end up if you do. I’ve been a server for years throughout all of this mess and I personally don’t see any better opportunities to get out of it than school. Serving is miserable. Yet it pays more than most other careers that don’t require a degree…