hi adv,
im basically just another below average college student. probably going to graduate with a ~2.8 or 2.9 gpa, and my first career path is looking more and more bleak as the semester goes on (fuck general chemistry am i right). are there any graduates who can speak to things being at least okay with a sub par gpa? My degree will be a BS in biology and i have a minor in linguistics, but I just feel like im just gonna end up making 30 grand a year until i die poor and alone.
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Drop out.
Attend your local CC to give yourself something to do and pick up older girls.
Teach yourself React.
Get a React dev. job. Minimum 50K if you live in a rural area with 0 experience.
Problem solved.
I finished undergrad with a 3.0. I actually got into a great law school (rank between 25 and 20) with a scholarship and graduated... with a 2.9.
I'm embarrassed about my GPA, but I've got work. You just need to suck it up and find work that'll take you. You probably won't be doing chemistry (honestly even if you graduated with a 4.0 in genchem, it's still a bachelor's).
already went to CC and transferred in. teaching myself python this summer for bioinformatics.
yeah i know ill be okay with finding work. i really wanted to go into optometry but every school has a suggested minimum 3.0 gpa, as well as recommedation letters from an optometrist and professors. considering all my classes are 200+ people i dont get to know professors all that much, and my entire college career (im a junior) i havent gotten involved in anything because im just stupid like that.
>i really wanted to go into optometry but every school has a suggested minimum 3.0 gpa, as well as recommedation letters from an optometrist and professors
Yeah that might be a problem. You SHOULD be able to bring your GPA up a little though dude.
While this wouldn't have worked with law school, have you considered doing a master's program and getting better grades there before applying?
>considering all my classes are 200+ people i dont get to know professors all that much
Take upper level classes for chrissakes. There were 30k undergrads where I went to college, and I got letters of recommendation from my profs from upper-level classes because almost all of those had fewer than 30 students in most sections, and they involved writing papers. Shit, my law school apps? I was 4 years out when I applied. The LoRs I'd gotten from profs were from people I'd not spoken to since graduation. I still got them without a lot of trouble, again asking via e-mail.
LoRs aren't as hard as you think dude, though I agree they're kind of intimidating feeling.
To apply for the state bar, I had to get "references" (not quite as intense as LoRs but they still have to speak to your character) from two law school profs. One of mine was a guy I'd had 3 classes with (and every section was at least 50 people), and the other was a guy I'd had one class with as a 1L (and there were about 50 people in that class too). I asked by e-mail and they said "Okay" the same day. No muss no fuss.
yeah i was gonna try to do some prep work for organic chemistry this summer but who fuckin knows. I cant really take many upper level classes at the moment since i switched to biology just last semester. I was considering a masters program, but ive also been looking at research jobs at other universities and perhaps taking classes there if they offer them. I cant really afford to do a full masters program, and i doubt id get into them.
>I cant really take many upper level classes at the moment since i switched to biology just last semester.
Sounds like you're not gonna graduate on time then. Just unfuck yourself and get above 3.0. Look at medical fields other than optometry as well so you don't get yourself stuck if all 23 of the optometry programs in the US turn you down. Chiropractic and physician assistant are both fine.
Fuck, you could get your MD in Dominica with a GPA like yours. My old college roommate did that, and I'm almost sure he was in the low 3.0 range. Ross University isn't bad actually; you do 2 years down in Dominica, then do clinical rotations in the US at a number of hospitals. I don't think it's 5th pathway either. My old roommate went on to get board certified in family medicine and is working in Connecticut or something. So he has a fucking job, which is better than a lot of people with worthless undergrad degrees.
Just don't panic man. Focus on what you can do now. You transferred in from CC, that means you were capable of doing the work and getting decent enough grades at one time. Actual university studies are NOT that much harder. Just figure out where you're going wrong and fix that.
i have to take an extra semester but thats it. Thanks for the advice.
Yeah, don't beat yourself up about it. Accept that you may have screwed up in the past, but leave it all in the past and make a commitment to pull yourself together in the present and going forward. You can absolutely do this.
DON'T DO CARIBBEAN MEDICINE
DON'T DO CARIBBEAN MEDICINE
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More like know what you're getting into. I actually 100% agree with you, and wouldn't do it myself. But it's a legitimate way into the practice and you can actually get work. The people who get fucked over by those schools are the ones who shouldn't be practicing in the first place.
You can't get work. You need to match with a residency after med school. There are more medschool graduates than there are residency spots. 5% of American medical school students don't match into residency.
You'll get one person per graduating class per medical school from a Caribbean school who will match into an American residency
>40% attrition rate.
Its the same in my contry for engineering schools.
Many students get in (because there is no mandatory entrance exam, only grades matter) but then after 2 years, 40% are gone.
It has always been like this, even since the 70s.
Doesn’t mean the school is bad, only that the barrier for entrance is set low to allow anyone with potential to come, not just the top 10%.
Probably, these scools have a problem filling all places.
This is true. My friend who went to Ross in Dominica put in his app on Monday and got a phone call to tell him he was accepted on Tuesday. It was literally just whoever could pay could get in.
Can't speak for chemistry, but I was a pretty average law student and I landed a job in a good, reputable law firm. That said, I had extracurriculars that looked good on my resume, as well as some sort of work experience.
I was in your shoes OP. 2.8 GPA microbiology major. Bad prospects after graduation, basically not able to go to grad school of any kind. I thought if I really wanted to go to grad school or medical school of some kind I'd go to cc for a while, take easy classes and boost my overall GPA. But I don't know the logistics of that, just knew a guy who did it. You could also try to get a certificate for medical lab technology and work in a hospital lab somewhere, but that takes another year or two of schooling in most cases, even with a bachelors.
There are jobs for bio majors but you have to look really hard. I got lucky and landed a pretty sweet gig that pays about 50k a year, but most entry level pay maybe 30-40k if you're lucky. I had to work a couple shitty places before I found my current job, and I have to work nights, but I enjoy the work.
All is not lost, you have options. There are clerical jobs that don't require a specific degree. If you're really desperate you can join the military, if you have a bachelor's you can usually automatically enter officer training.
It sucks that you have to pay tuition though.
The schools im refering to are state universities, and you don’t have to pay unless youre a foreigner.
>Some were disappointed about only having a hotplate and microwave to cook with. No laundry services.
Seriously, you cannot complain. I paid $500 per month to live on 15 square meeters with a shared kitchen when i was a student.
My friend lived with a hotplate and microvave for years, and they paid more than i paid.
>I thought if I really wanted to go to grad school or medical school of some kind I'd go to cc for a while, take easy classes and boost my overall GPA.
You gotta do the research on whether this works for grad school though. For law school it would be 100% useless: for the purposes of your GPA, they only consider courses taken before you were awarded your first bachelor's degree. Anything taken after is not considered part of your GPA for law school admissions purposes, whether it's CC, a second bachelor's, or even a master's or PhD. It simply doesn't count towards your GPA for admissions purposes. It's just treated like another extracurricular.
The guy I knew who did this had the intention of going to some kind of medical school.
Yeah I'm just saying do your research ahead of time. I never would've dreamed that about law school admissions. I honestly would've thought that your grad school GPA would be more important because it's more recent and therefore more indicative of your potential... but that's not how law school admissions work.
Interesting, whew knew lawyers were such cheap bastards?
It has to do with how US News figures out the law school rankings. They use the data from the mandatory annual disclosures the law schools release. While there are other factors, the big one is the median GPA and LSAT score for the entering class of 1Ls. But since GPAs are calculated differently at every college, and adding shit like postgraduate education complicates things immensely (and creates the opportunity to game the system), the council that handles law school admissions recalculates everyone's GPA according to a specific method (so, for example, if the college has a rule that lets you remove a failed course from your record if you retake it the next semester and pass with a high enough grade, the admissions council counts that failed class).
There's a bunch of other weird rules. It all has to do with preventing students and schools from gaming the USNWR rankings. The law school at my undergrad actually got in deep shit years ago when they got caught reporting falsified admissions data. So fucking glad I didn't go to their law school.