I’ll chime in here. My DS has just finished his first semester at Bama. He was not the best student in his high school class and his unweighted GPA was 3.89 or something like that. A good student with very good grades, but not necessarily at the top. He did not come in with any AP credit as he was only able to take two AP classes at his small Iowa school, and he chose to take 6 DE credits instead of 3 AP credits for English/LA and didn’t do well enough on the calc AP test to use that as credit. He is, however, very good at standardized tests and as a National Merit Finalist, he received an excellent scholarship package from Bama.
So, he had calc and chem in HS but wasn’t super confident in either. I would say his study skills are probably a little better than average but not the ideal, and he does know to go to class and pay attention while there.
He is in the honors college there and took Honors Calc I, Honors Chem I, Elementary German I (a new language for him), Intro to MechE and a first-year honors seminar that was pass/fail for everyone. I haven’t yet seen his final grades for calc and chem, but he did very well in all in his classes throughout the year. I don’t expect any surprises when grades are final based on his feelings after taking the final tests. He should have well above a 3.0 GPA.
Part of his success may be that the honors classes are smaller and may attract better professors. If your student qualifies for an academic scholarship, they probably qualify for the honors college so they can take advantage of that. He’s also not in a fraternity, so I can’t comment on how that would have affected his grades.
He did not feel overwhelmed by his course load at all and found it very easy to keep up with his classes while doing everything else he wanted to do. I think the previous advice on attending class, doing the homework, seeking help when needed, and knowing your strengths as a student are all more applicable than just taking an easy load or taking classes where you already know all the material.
Just my 2 cents.