Lots of people tell me that as long as I do well in AP classes and College Now classes I should be fine, but I don’t trust their judgement. I (quite literally) can’t afford to fail anything in college, so I need to make the right choice in colleges.
I know that it is difficult for me to read long passages if I am not interested in the topic, and that worries me. It is even more difficult if the paragraphs are long (a wall of text.) I usually try to read a paragraph or two, write down a summary of it, get distracted, then continue reading. (This is the strategy for my current college class.)
If I have a physical copy I would probably do better, but (again) I distract myself a lot. (If I don’t then I’ll get even less done.)
I don’t read much, if I am focused I can read ~250 wpm (based on how fast I read Catch-22.)
Writing, however, is fairly easy for me (I got a 5 in AP English), and although I will struggle to write about things I don’t care about I can always get it done. I can’t really tell how good my writing is and I’m not sure if there are any reliable indicators for that.
Questions:
Is an AP or college class a good judgement of how a real college class will be?
Could I handle the workload of a school like the University of Rochester or Syracuse?
Are there any online tests that show your ability to do well in a college class?
With college, you have more input into what courses you take. What do you think you will major in? Given that you don’t like to read long passages, perhaps the humanities are not for you? If not, then you shoudl consider continuing with your reading with note-taking strategy.
If you are in STEM, then your books would be regular text books. You will be able to minimize the classes that would need a lot of reading.
Also here are my general tips for doing well in school:
GO TO CLASS, BUY THE BOOK, READ THE CHAPTERS, AND DO THE HOMEWORK!
Go to Professor’s office hours early in the semester and Ask this question: “I know this is a really difficult class-- what are some of the common mistakes students make and how can I avoid them?”
If you have problems with the homework, go to Prof’s office hours. If they have any “help sessions” or “study sessions” or “recitations” or any thing extra, go to them.
Form a study group with other kids in your dorm/class.
Don’t do the minimum…for STEM classes do extra problems. You can buy books that just have problems for calculus or physics or whatever. Watch videos on line about the topic you are studying.
Go to the writing center if you need help with papers/math center for math problems (if they have them)
If things still are not going well, get a tutor.
Read this book: How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less by Cal Newport. It helps you with things like time management and how to figure out what to write about for a paper, etc.
If you feel you need to withdraw from a class, talk to your advisor as to which one might be the best …you may do better when you have less classes to focus on. But some classes may be pre-reqs and will mess your sequence of classes up.
For tests that you didn’t do well on, can you evaluate what went wrong? Did you never read that topic? Did you not do the homework for it? Do you kind of remember it but forgot what to do? Then next time change the way you study…there may be a study skill center at your college.
How much time outside of class do you spend studying/doing homework? It is generally expected that for each hour in class, you spend 2-3 outside doing homework. Treat this like a full time job.
At first, don’t spend too much time other things rather than school work. (sports, partying, rushing fraternities/sororities, video gaming etc etc)
If you run into any social/health/family troubles (you are sick, your parents are sick, someone died, broke up with boy/girlfriend, suddenly depressed/anxiety etcetc) then immediately go to the counseling center and talk to them. Talk to the dean of students about coordinating your classes…e.g. sometimes you can take a medical withdrawal. Or you could withdraw from a particular class to free up tim for the others. Sometimes you can take an incomplete if you are doing well and mostly finished the semester and suddenly get pneumonia/in a car accident (happened to me)…you can heal and take the final first thing the next semester. But talk to your adviser about that too.
At the beginning of the semester, read the syllabus for each class. It tells you what you will be doing and when tests/HW/papers are due. Put all of that in your calendar. The professor may remind you of things, but it is all there for you to see so take initiative and look at it.
Make sure you understand how to use your online class system…Login to it, read what there is for your classes, know how to upload assignments (if that is what the prof wants).
If you get an assignment…make sure to read the instructions and do all the tasks on the assignment. Look at the rubric and make sure you have covered everything.
If you are not sure what to do, go EARLY to the professors office hours…not the day before the assignment is due.
You might think that this is all completely obvious, but I have read many stories on this and other websites where people did not do the above and then are asking for help on academic appeal letters.
Depends on the college? I went a relatively low tier college in the ~400s and I definitely would compare the lower division courses to AP courses. It’s so dead on accurate and concur with some friends that go to a UC. Just in college you get less BS work… But some AP teachers in senior year treat it like college and don’t assign any busywork such as notes or questions for homework.
Life has no guarantees. Go to class, do the work, ask questions, go to tutoring as needed. If you are doing that, you should be fine in general required courses or they wouldn’t have admitted you (unless you cheated your way to good grades in high school and don’t have a good foundation, I suppose).
If you are doing all of that and still struggling in courses related to your major, consider whether the major isn’t a good fit. You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. For example, I knew kids who were in the accounting program because the career was a good one and would pay well. They struggled with the courses and were miserable until they changed majors to one that fit them better (elementary education, in their cases).