Might lose my scholarship?

Colleges & Universities University of Maryland - College Park
1

Hi everyone,

I am a freshman in her second semester. I was formally an engineering major and I was blessed to receive a full Banneker/Key scjolarship. I have never had any academic troubles until I came to Maryland, and from what I’ve seen this seems to happen very often with the transition from high school to college. Unfortunately, I received a 2.785 GPA my first semester which is so embarrassing and depressing because I feel like I am much smarter than that.

When I think back to engineering orientation, I cannot help but wish someone had helped me in a one-to-one manner. I was put in a room with a bunch of other students, a few engineering upperclassmen, and only one adviser. Being a naive freshman, I decided to take only 14 credits which consisted of ENES100, CHEM135, MATH141, ENGL101, and HONR100 (a one credit required honors course). I had no idea I was setting myself up by taking only core classes and no electives.

I ended up getting Cs in both CHEM135 and MATH141. CHEM135 was taught by a horrible professor who taught hardly anything that was on the homework, and I only had discussion once a week, which hardly helped. I had never taken AP Chem in high school, which I have identified as my main weakness in this class. A lot of the people I knew who passed this class with a good grade either took AP Chem before or cheated (majority of them cheated).

MATH141 is a weedout class, and being the freshman I am, I had no idea about this and was completely shocked when I took the first midterm. It’s shocking how one can completely understand all the concepts and yet the professor manages to make the exams ridiculously hard and tricky, they were designed to make people fail. Furthermore, my professor never published his ELMS page so I had only a vague idea of what my grades were the entire semester.

So with 2 C’s, a B, an A+ and an A-, my GPA suffered horribly. This semester I have to take a minimum of 16 credits to reach 30 and I am unsure of what the future holds.

I switched to a math major and my courseload is as followed:

MATH241 & MATH240
PHIL140
INAG110
SOCY105

My main concern is my two math classes. I have heard that Calc 3 is way easier than Calc 2 but after Calc 2 I am completely terrified of UMD math classes. Should I drop one math class and replace it with another elective? I need at least a 3.6-4.0 in order to keep my scholarship next semester so can anyone give me advice?

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Wow sorry to hear about that, you will need that high GPA and I would honestly recommend only taking 1 math class. Those are two 4 credit courses and I wouldn’t count on them being easy. With the +/- policy even two A- will make it so you basically have to get all As or A+ in the rest of the courses.

I would take another elective to be honest, possibly a low level science that is interesting (they have some intro physics ones that are pretty easy and since you took the calc courses they shouldn’t be hard for you).

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@mdhelp‌ I thought about dropping linear algebra (MATH240) but eventually I’ll have to take that along with another math class. So should I focus on getting the gpa up first and then taking it along with another math class? For some reason the math dept pairs linear algebra with another math class (either calc 3 or diff eq)

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Its too bad this wasn’t posted before the semester began. Keep in mind, it is probably cheaper to do an extra semester than it is to lose the BK scholarship. With that kind mind, you are unlikely to find 8 credits worth of classes one week into the semester to replace both math classes. In fact, it is going to be hard to replace either since you will have to find a 4 credit class (and will be behind).

At this point there is no doubt your focus should be on getting the GPA at or above the required 3.2 before you worry about major requirements.

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@mdhelp‌ I totally agree, I wouldn’t mind putting off math requirements for later. I can replace the 4 credit linear algebra class with a 3 credit elective. I need a total of 16 credits this semester and I’m currently at 17. The problem is that I’m having a hard time finding any open electives

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Good luck AmbitionMission. I hope you are able to make it work.

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May I ask why you chose to major in math if you got a C in MATH141? It’s not a weed out class. It is not “designed to make people fail.” If it was, how do you explain so many students getting A’s?

You may want to look into Freshman Forgiveness and retake the class. http://umd.edu/catalog/index.cfm/show/content.section/c/27/ss/1584/s/1537

I could be wrong, but I think the most practical approach right now would be to switch to Letters & Sciences. Just take straight gen eds/electives. Get the gpa up to secure your scholarship. Then you can decide where to go with your major.

The rest of what I post is more a tough love commentary…so you may not want to continue reading

For others reading your post, I am just going to ask how you can say you had no help in engineering? I happen to know damn well there are a LOT of resources to support engineering students. If you chose not to take advantage of them, that is your choice, but please don’t give the impression that it was poor advising on the part of engineering.

The FLEXUS program specifically is designed to take women in engineering (VIRTUS is the male version for others that need to know) by the hand and provide tutoring as needed for core courses, assign you a personal mentor, and help you by taking classes in a “cluster” for extra support, etc. http://www.wie.umd.edu/undergrad/flexus http://www.seeds.umd.edu/programs/virtus

If you didn’t want to participate in FLEXUS, and you saw you were having trouble with your grades, did you go to any of the tutors that are available?
http://www.eng.umd.edu/advising/tutoring
http://www-math.umd.edu/undergraduate/resources.html
http://www.tutoring.umd.edu/

Look, it happened, and it’s in the past. Nothing you can do other than own it. Take responsibility for it and move forward. It won’t happen again if you don’t let it.

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@AmbitionMission: Based on what you’ve said, I think you can keep your scholarship if

  1. You make sure you get As in the three humanities classes
  2. Replace Calc3 with another easy GenEd class (non-math, non-science); 241 is not a co-requisite for 240, so far as I know. The only prerequisite for 240 is 141
  3. Work really really really hard on 240-Linear Algebra: that is, do as many problems from the end of each chapter in Lay as is physically possible, way beyond what's on the homework assignments; meet as often as possible with the TAs to make certain you're getting things right; keep ahead of the lectures (by reading as far ahead as you can) because the semester always starts slow, often stays slow, till after Spring Break, which is typically when most students realize that things are looking bleak. Doing this could get you an A in 240 (besides regaining the self-confidence that you will need for the next three years)

Take nothing for granted; with one math class you can do the above, but with two (especially if the other is Calc3) it could be quite hard.

Calc3 is not easy; in addition to a sound grasp of Calc2, you need to develop (if you don’t already have it) good facility with geometrical thinking and vectors. Again the exams there could look a lot harder than the homework problems, depending on the instructors, especially if you’re hoping to get replicas of the homework on the tests. For every math-oriented course that you sign up for in the future, start studying early - at least a month before classes start.

I’m assuming you got in with AP credit directly into Calc2 which should have been okay at most places but it seems almost every physics/math/EE course in UMd is significantly harder than at a peer school (e.g. UIUC, UMich etc as consistently reported by their undergrads who’ve subsequently done grad work here at UMd).

Finally majoring in Math or Physics is 20x harder than majoring in MechE; EE itself is 10x to 15x harder than MechE, but don’t worry about that now.

From now till your Finals in May focus simply on Math 240, your replacement course for 241, and the other three humanities classes.

All the best, and keep your spirits up!

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@MD0058 majoring in Math is 20x harder than majoring in MechE? Really? I dare you to take Fluid Mechanics and Transfer Processes. Go ahead.

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Maryvarsity, I could dare you to sign up for Differential Geometry and Low-Dimensional Topologies (but I won’t :)) Fluid Mechanics is not my field but I did teach an undergraduate applied math topics course (as a gesture of goodwill to a colleague) elsewhere a million years ago; it was very well received and goes to show how much of a “better” teacher one can be in a foreign subject. I hope the course in question isn’t giving you sleepless nights; there are open problems in fluid mechanics (one with a million dollar prize waiting for a solution or counterexample) so a bit of elbow grease might pay off handsomely in the long run :slight_smile:

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You missed my point entirely, MD0058. I was merely questioning how you can state unequivocally that math and physics majors are specifically 20x harder than MechE majors!

Fyi, neither courses keep me up at night. I am not a student, only a proud mom of a MechE, lol. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I must apologize then; I assumed it was clear that these are my opinions, based on how easy or difficult I found something when I first encountered it. (When I was in an undergraduate program, I had to study, in addition to pure math, what was called applied maths, i.e. rigorous versions of many subjects like fluid dynamics that are now mainly in physics or engineering in the US, though not across the Atlantic)

It is entirely possible that others might see it differently. Peace.

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@AmbitionMission - My son’s experience with those two classes was very similar to yours, although he did manage to earn a B in each of them. He does not have a B/K scholarship to lose, but he does have a presidential scholarship that we would very much like him to keep. He applied as “undecided,” so was assigned to Letters and Sciences for his first semester (which he just finished). Over the summer, he had decided that he might actually like to apply to the engineering school. He already had credit for all of the gateway courses except for Chem135. He did not take AP Chem in high school, and like you, found that this was definitely detrimental to his success in this class (he also did not care for the professor). After earning the lowest grade he’s ever received on a test, he spent hours upon hours studying (more than he ever studied before) and joined a study group. Luckily, he was able to improve to a B. He took Math141 (equivalent of calc 2, correct?) even though he had received AP credit for this. He thought that retaking it at MD would be beneficial, but that probably wasn’t the case. He thought that the tests were unnecessarily obtuse. When he met with his advisor in the engineering college for the first time (last week), the advisor told him that he should have never taken a class that he had already received credit for - especially Math141. The advisor told him that this is a weed-out class and that the only function of retaking it would be to lower his GPA (which it did). I definitely sympathize with your situation and hope that you’re able to pull your GPA up enough this semester to keep your scholarship.

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One more thought. You could take summer classes. Unless they have changed the rules you can include summer classes this coming summer in your total credits required for 30 a year. Call the BK office and ask that specific question, can summer classes count toward the 30 credits. Of course you need to do the math to determine what GPA would save your scholarship if you only take 12 credits (by dropping a math class). And I agree that I would focus on general electives, pick topics that you love, although that being said general electives might look easy but they can still be pretty demanding depending on the teacher.

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@AmbitionMission‌ , Just my two cents here, You gave some reasons for trouble with professors, but I wonder if there is more that you can do for yourself. What were your grades, test scores and activities in High School ? I ask, because they must have been pretty impressive for you to earn such a prestigious scholarship. I’m sure you had a few clunker teachers along the way.You probably just have to get back to what you were doing in HS.

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@Disneydad‌ Sometimes people actually struggle because they treat it like HS, remember that your competition is also a bunch of people that did well in school. All of those early engineering classes are designed to be hard to make sure the students will be able to get through the program. Some people simply won’t make it, its not a matter of effort sometimes.