UCHICAGO Grades, GPA, Hard Work, Student Study Ethic 2016 Thread

exacademic
Sun, 08 Jan 2017 14:21:33 +0000

Another mom with a first year daughter who doesn’t post here and whose 1st Q GPA is above your benchmarks (4 courses). Future bio major. She goes downtown maybe 3 weeks out of 4 (for dinner/fun on Saturday night). Does house stuff (e.g. Movie Night, field trips) and gym stuff occasionally. Typically has meals with friends but when her workload or theirs gets especially demanding, all bets are off. Still procrastinates by watching sitcoms on Netflix.

Two outsider observations of her experience:

(1) course selection can make or break you, especially in the sciences. Sciences involve a lot of classroom time (lectures, lab, section) in addition to homework. Don’t take two killer courses at once, especially if you want to do four courses at a time. This may fall in the category of traits you have to abandon. My kid went to a HS where the ethos seemed to be that the mark of a smart person was that s/he was taking the maximum number of courses allowed and the hardest courses possible at all times and as early/young as possible. In college, that’s the mark of a foolish person.

(2) college is a big transition academically. In most HS courses, everything you need to know is something the teacher has told/shown you in the weeks before the test/paper/evaluation. Not so at U of C. OTOH, that’s because exams get used to see if you can put what you’ve used to work and go beyond what you’ve been told. OTOH, it also reflects the fact that the people teaching you haven’t been hired because of their teaching ability. They’ve been hired because of their potential to do important research. Two very different skill sets — and a different focus. So, as a student, you need to take charge of your own education. Read the textbook, even if it’s not required. Listen to lectures critically, making a note whenever you don’t understand what just got said or why. Then go back and try to figure it out (look it up, ask a friend, ask the TA, work through a practice problem, go to Harper tutors, ask the Prof). Start to synthesize/organize the course materials a week or more before an exam. Have a big picture and know where the parts fit into the whole and/or how you decide which tool is appropriate for which job. And while the burden is one you wrt making sure you learn the material, don’t be shy about reaching out for help. There are lots of resources available and my kid’s experience has been that both TAs and profs are very accessible.