<p>Did your grades drop drastically?</p>
<p>Would you say that your grade determines how smart you are or how much work you put into the class?</p>
<p>My first year grades were excellent. My grades were very good and I was satisfied.</p>
<p>“Smartness” (however you define it)=Work</p>
<p>In other words, I believe, that to be ‘smart’ you must have put in some form of work, whether it was before you took the class (ie self taugh/reading stuff on Wiki), or while you were in the class (ie studying hard, going to OH).</p>
<p>Academically, a joke. </p>
<p>Being comparatively smart allows you study minimally and make high grades.</p>
<p>Didn’t go to class. Didn’t do homework. Didn’t go to exams. = Wasted a lot of $$$. Partied.</p>
<p>I would describe my first year of college as “disappointing” academically. I had excellent grades but did not feel like I was learning much of anything. I enjoyed exactly three out of the eight classes in my first year. Two of those were junior/senior upper-level courses. I later learned that upper-level classes are much more interesting than intro classes in general.</p>
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<p>Grades definitely show how much work you put in class; grades are not nearly as a result of intelligence level as work is.</p>
<p>hm, have u guys noticed any differences from high school? [AP classes & the like]</p>
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I actually found my high school AP classes more difficult than my college classes.</p>
<p>My grades were much higher than my high school grades…but I also did a lot more work! Classes weren’t that different from my high school honors classes in terms of difficulty, but more (work) was expected. Grades reflect the amount of work, not intelligence. A math genius could fail basic algebra if he/she never went to class or didn’t do assignments.</p>
<p>I am the same as most people. Freshman year of college I worked a lot harder than in high school and as a result my grades were a lot better. </p>
<p>It is weird; I never applied myself until freshman year. Maybe it is cause I am spending 25k/year to be here or the fact that in high school I always had my parents forcing me to work at school and the instant they said I studied enough I stopped, whereas in college noone is telling me when to stop. I also didn’t bring any videogames to college.</p>
<p>I had all A’s in high school. Well, mostly A’s anyway. I took a total of… 8 AP’s, I think? I don’t remember. It was a lot though. I ended up not getting credit for half of them though because my score was too low… go figure.</p>
<p>Freshman year, I worked my butt off. I came out with almost all A’s, which is no small feat at my school. My social life suffered accordingly. I came out with no real friends, but some possible “leads,” who ended up becoming very close friends the next year.</p>
<p>Every semester/year since has been on a decline in terms of grades. I think it is mostly due to the increasing difficulty, and somewhat (though still significantly) to increased social activities. I hang out almost every weekend, attend campus events, and am involved in more activities both during the week (8.5 hour job, 6 hours volunteering, 2-4 hours Greek life, etc.) and on the weekends. It’s a lot more than I ever did Freshman year.</p>
<p>My roommates, on the other hand, did the exact opposite. They barely went to class, and created their social niche very fast. They are now trying to recover their GPAs, but have a very solid social circle. </p>
<p>The choice… is yours. ;]</p>
<p>Currently a sophomore. I attended my university with the intent of transferring, the university has a good name in my state but is not well recognized outside of it.</p>
<p>I graduated high school with a B average but currently I have a high A at the university I am at. Then again, the high school I went to was pretty rough academically speaking and I had a bad environment to grow up in.</p>
<p>My first quarter was pretty disappointing here at Stanford. I took a ridiculous workload while everyone else was taking the basic 15 out of 20. My social life sucked and while everyone else breezed through I got 3 B’s and an A-. I’m taking 15 this quarter so hopefully things turn around.</p>