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I got a C in UCLA's 32A course and may get a B in an astronomy-related course this quarter at UCLA.

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 2:33 am
by failedhopeful213
How would a top 10 astrophysics graduate school like Caltech see this? I'm an Asian male and I already feel quite behind. I thought I can just not attend class this quarter and still ace my classes like Albert Einstein did when he was in college, but it turns out that I didn't do as well as I had hoped (no clue why). I mean, I studied the material to the classes (especially 32A which is multivariable calculus part 1) the summer before they even began and I barely passed for whatever stupid reason. This quarter is my very first quarter at UCLA. I'm looking through all of the result threads and I'm seeing non-Asians with 4.0 GPAs getting accepted to Caltech and I won't even get a 4.0 and I'm an Asian male...
My current college GPA is a 2.35 out a 4.0 in the worst case scenario... and I can probably bump that up to a 3.94 if I get all A's and A+'s by the end of my undergraduate years.

I will pretty much take a 1-1.5 year break from school, and study everything that I need to know on my own during that time.
I was a "superb" (not to me) student in high school with a 4.0+ weighted GPA, but I feel that high school didn't really prepare me well for college.

Re: I got a C in UCLA's 32A course and may get a B in an astronomy-related course this quarter at UCLA.

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 4:10 am
by chrysaor4
Take a deep breath--it's your first quarter of college, nobody's going to hold a few low grades against you four years from now when you're applying to grad schools. It takes time to adjust to college, and people understand that. A few things though:

1) I recommend that instead of holding yourself to unreasonably high standards, you focus on exploring and getting involved with the research opportunities available to you at UCLA. Grad schools will take a 3.7 student with awesome research experience over a 4.amazing student who only spent all his/her time studying. Your application will also depend on your GRE scores, your letters of recommendation, etc... GPA is just one part of it.
2) Since you just started college, it's entirely possible you won't even want to go to grad school four years from now. You'll grow a lot over the next four years, and perhaps it's a little too early to pigeonhole yourself into another 6+ years of school on top of the four in front of you right now, but that's just my take on things.
3) What matters most in grad school is that you find a subfield/research group/advisor that is a good fit for your interests. Don't go to Caltech just because it's Caltech.

Re: I got a C in UCLA's 32A course and may get a B in an astronomy-related course this quarter at UCLA.

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:46 am
by jabennett2194
chrysaor4 wrote:Take a deep breath--it's your first quarter of college, nobody's going to hold a few low grades against you four years from now when you're applying to grad schools. It takes time to adjust to college, and people understand that. A few things though:

1) I recommend that instead of holding yourself to unreasonably high standards, you focus on exploring and getting involved with the research opportunities available to you at UCLA. Grad schools will take a 3.7 student with awesome research experience over a 4.amazing student who only spent all his/her time studying. Your application will also depend on your GRE scores, your letters of recommendation, etc... GPA is just one part of it.
2) Since you just started college, it's entirely possible you won't even want to go to grad school four years from now. You'll grow a lot over the next four years, and perhaps it's a little too early to pigeonhole yourself into another 6+ years of school on top of the four in front of you right now, but that's just my take on things.
3) What matters most in grad school is that you find a subfield/research group/advisor that is a good fit for your interests. Don't go to Caltech just because it's Caltech.
Incredible answer <3