I need to take some developmental math courses at a community college to remind myself of numbers, and to work on grasping some concepts I didn’t quite get the first time around.
Although the courses won’t count for a grade, and therefore won’t affect my GPA, apparently they’ll still appear on my transcript.
My transcript at this cc is immaculate and I took great care to choose courses I knew I could get the A in. Literature, philosophy… Everything but math… I’m already a student at Amherst College but I’m possibly interested in transferring. I also hope to attend law school some day, but mostly, I just feel self-conscious walking around with this embarrassing academic weakness. Should I work on my math privately, or get instruction but risk tarnishing my transcript?
Amherst College is a great school. I consider it to be the equivalent of an Ivy League level school. If you do well there then you can be very much on track for a great law school (or whatever next step you choose). I don’t see any good reason to transfer from there to an Ivy League school for undergrad. Going to graduate or law school at an Ivy League school after graduating from Amherst College to me makes a lot more sense.
Catching up on any weaknesses that you have in Math also strikes me as a very good idea.
As such I would suggest that you do what you know is the right thing. Fix your academic weakness, and don’t worry about transferring to an Ivy League school.
I attended Amherst to please a family member and ended up being miserable there. I was never able to find my niche socially nor academically in that small, tight-knit community. I’m very interested in transferring to a larger school of equal caliber if possible. I would need to take the SAT in order to achieve that but as I said, my math is a considerable weakness.
^ it’s Amherst. No core curriculum. Students transferring from there have classes in the areas that interest them. It wouldn’t surprise to adcoms since op wouldn’t be alone in taking some subjects and not others- that’s Just many chose Amherst over, say, Williams.
Do work on math, especially statistics, privately. You can audit a class at Amherst, like a ‘math for poets’, eight? And use their tutoring center. This way, no transcript.
However as a transfer you’d be expected to take math at the college you transfer to. In addition, it’s going to be hard to prove you can’t find what you want at Amherst since you have the 5-college consortium.
Are you at a community college or at Amherst now? In another thread you posted that you took a leave of absence from Amherst last fall after getting several bad grades there.
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/rur_index.html has some on-line quizzes that can help you determine what math course you are ready for, or what topics you need to self-study if you go that route.
@TomSrOfBoston I’m currently taking courses at a cc to reintroduce myself to the classroom. They won’t transfer back to Amherst but I feel this is a necessary first step. Yes, I still have those grades from that semester. I’m going to talk to my Dean at some point.
@MYOS1634 I’m not a fan of the college consortium. I didn’t go through the trouble of getting admitted to a selective college so I can take classes at a less selective one. I want to be able to attend class at the college I belong to. Amherst was a very unhappy place for me however. I probably will try to transfer at some point, but I’m not getting anywhere good if I don’t brush up on math somehow.
Lots of people take remedial math at their CCs, and eventually work their way up to the math courses required for their majors. This is not a big deal at all. If you will spend the time needed, and work to get good grades even in the remedial courses, it will be fine.
I teach Adult Basic Education and pre-GED math. My students like these websites:
However, use the Consortium. There are interesting classes and interesting students there’s and if you’re unhappy with how small Amherst college is, that’s your chance to expand, meet new people, and take classes in subjects Amherst may not have. I assume you also got into Amherst in order to take advantage of what it had to offer and the Consortium is definitely part of it. Taking a class at a women’s college or at UMass would be a worthwhile experience in itself. Take the Consortium class as a fifth class if you worry it’ll be too easy but I don’t see the harm in stepping out of your current comfort zone like what you did for math.
As for math, what you need to be able to take is statistics. See if there’s a gentle introduction at Amherst and plan to take it next semester.
I’m not sure you can easily transfer to a top 25 university, since, beside stellar grades, you have to prove Amherst doesn’t have what you need - and between the high quality, variety of majors, resources, and access to the Consortium, it’s hard to find something that’s missing. And obviously you could transfer to your state flagship if all you wanted was a large university with sports (not to mention there’s a large university in the Consortium.)
How to explain to law schools why you went to 3 different colleges, if you could even get into one as good as Amherst at this point?
You don’t have to take math to graduate form Amherst, you may have to if you transfer. I am not familiar with the LSAT but does it have math on it?
Ugh, this attitude makes me think you won’t be happy anywhere. Smith, MoHo, Hampshire and Umass are all great schools with terrific classes that you can explore easily and for free. If you hate being on Amherst campus, then take as many off of it as you can.
Think hard about what you can do now to make your current school work. How about going abroad for ALL of junior year, not just a semester? That gets you halfway there. And you don’t have to leave the country if you don’t want to, you can spend a year on another campus in the US - without having to go through the apply/transfer process. You’ll keep your financial aid, if that is important.