<p>I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about curves, crazy overachieving nerds, etc. in all honesty, i was extremely fortunate to be accepted, and i’m a very english-writing kind of guy, i absolutely BLOW at math. </p>
<p>Any input? i’m sure many are pondering this same question.</p>
<p>i think you and i are in very similar boats.</p>
<p>the fact of the matter is that the ‘insane’ factor exists at nearly every major university, even party schools… each institution has its own contingent of serious students, and those are the people you end up competing with, should you choose to.</p>
<p>curves are always the topic of horror stories, and for that, its just luck of the draw on professors (hope they’re merciful)</p>
<p>overachieving nerds, a category which sadly, I may fall under (relative to your opinion), are not in short supply at ucla, or cal, or princeton, or anywhere, but the nice thing about college is that it will allow you to compete with those nerds, but on a level playing field.</p>
<p>to clarify, youll be going up against nerds in writing and philosophy (i dont know what your major is), as opposed to the engineering (sorry flopsy), or physics nerds. Your 4 years will be an exercise in competitive nerdery no doubt, but at least you’ll be able to take on most…after all, if the university didn’t think you could, you wouldnt have gotten in.</p>
<p>i asked a second year student a similar question, and she said that the “top 2 students get As, top 5 get Bs, and the rest get Cs or Ds” style of curve usually happens in the science/math (south campus) majors. But in the humanities (north campus) classes, the curve is the “if the highest score is a 22/50, then a 22 is a 100%” style.</p>
<p>so if writing is your forte, you should be fine.</p>
<p>oh damn, thats great if the humanities classes are like that. mariopuzo, i respect your username. im a huge fan. have you read the last don?</p>
<p>That is not true at all, at least for south campus courses.</p>
<p>They calculate the median score for the class; that is the line that separates the B- and C+ grade. So, half the students get B- and above while the rest gets C+ and below.</p>
<p>The curves usually don’t negatively affect letter grades significantly.</p>
<p>I think the curve, grades, and workloads comes with the territory that you will venture into. </p>
<p>Im fairly certain that if you go into a major that has a strong mathematics/science foundation then you will face a lot of these aspects. That is just the nature of those majors (Engineering in particular)</p>
<p>UCLA is difficult all around. Whether youre a history, psychology, computer science, or Biology major you will face your share of tuff stuff. When you submitted your application back in November did you expect UCLA too be easy? </p>
<p>I think personally, you will be fine because if you are a talented writer then writing/humanities should come to you easy and with added study you will be able to compete for B+/A-. </p>
<p>What it boils down to is being able to put in the work. I am no nerd, but there have been several instances this year alone where I have made my schools valedictorian look stupid and accredit that to just studying an hour a day and having an optimistic attitude (Something which many nerds dont have) </p>
<p>So just keep your chin up and put in the work and you should be able to graduate with a respectable GPA.</p>
<p>no it’s not as difficult as everyone says it is. of course, this is coming from a north campus (social science) major. i always hear from my south campus (sciences) friends how hard and competitive it is.</p>
<p>what is a good GPA for law school?</p>
<p>3.70 is a good GPA for law school.
3.80 is a good GPA for law school with the (+0.5) for A+ grades. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>any more reports from south campus? how 'bout them bio/phys sci classes? :)</p>
<p>They’re big. Hard. The only notion of comfort you can get is assuming that you’re in the top half of the class or know everything taught and maybe a bit more. When you do screw up on a test, the only way out of it is probably acing the rest of the exams and/or relying on everyone else getting screwed too (though there will always be people that do superb).</p>
<p>ooh, sounds like i’m going to have the time of my life for the next four years. ;)</p>
<p>lets keep it coming…who are the people who end up being dropouts? unmotivated or just couldnt handle it?</p>
<p>I’d say the dropouts are a mixture of several types of people. One type is just by a simple stroke of bad luck: troubles at home, health problems, etc which they couldn’t control that caused them to be unable to keep up w/ the academics. The other two groups are what you listed. Unmotivated students and those who couldn’t handle it (and probably never would no matter how hard they tried), just by the nature of the types of students that are accepted. This is a California public university where they are mandated to accept so many students from California, and the public school system in California is one of the worst. I’m not trying to be cynical, but at least in the south campus classes, some of these “unmotivated/people who couldn’t handle it” are quite easy to spot. Most lower division south campus courses are graded on a curve, and that means that there are always students who fail (and the truth is that you’ll be glad about the UC admission policy come this time around).</p>
<p>another thing to note… it seems like a lot of the people who drop out from south campus majors but nevertheless not from ucla can be classified in two ways also. first, some of them are just not academically cut to survive the science courses. but the second reason, which i believe is a huge factor, is that many of these south campus majors were fooling themselves and simply didnt really like their major. they were in it for the pre-med or whatever, but rarely does someone who does something he/she does not like do it well. </p>
<p>MAKE SURE YOU STUDY SOMETHING YOU LIKE TO STUDY. take courses that you’re interested in. life and your grades will be better. </p>
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<p>depends what kind of law school you want to go to. 3.5+ is awesome for loyola law school. probably would need 3.7-3.8 for top 14 law schools. and then there’s yale/harvard/stanford… uh… 3.9-4.0+</p>
<p>Well, I’m glad there’s some south campusers like that. :)</p>