DS just finished his sophomore year of engineering. He had a horrible first semester freshman year -- didn't fail anything, but had a 2.1 GPA; a better 2nd semester (2.9 GPA). Did fine last semester (3.1 GPA). This semester he had to withdraw from a class because he got too far behind, but the rest of his classes were going okay until finals. He tanked his Deforms final (12 multiple choice questions... yuck), which caused him to fail the class. His overall GPA is 2.5 now, so he's still in good standing with the university. But, because he has AP credits, he's running up against "satisfactory progress" policies for continued enrollment in his major that require he have passed deforms by the time he has 72 credit hours including those from transfer and AP. He has 76 credit hours ... 15 of those are from AP -- 6 for English, 3 for Calc, 3 for Spanish, and 3 for Govt .. only the English and Calc actually affected his schedule at all ... the others don't help him meet requirements but are additional "gen ed" credits over and above what he will need to graduate. So he's checking with his advisor about what that means for his ability to continue to take classes -- does he have to pass deforms before he can take anything else toward his degree? All of his options moving forward hinge on the answer to that question. Whenever he retakes the class, the grade will not replace the failing grade; just gets averaged in as another class.
But in the bigger picture, he's struggling with wondering if he should continue to pursue engineering or whether he's just not cut out for it. He says he really enjoys the material he's learning in his technical classes, and is frustrated because he feels like he knows the material alot better than his grades reflect; he was pretty much getting at/just above the average grade on deforms tests during the semester (which were not multiple choice), and was doing fine on homeworks, but then tanked the final (25% of his grade). He knows that it is very difficult to find internships with a GPA below 3.0, so he's worried he is unemployable now, because getting his GPA up above a 3.0 in the next 2 years would require almost perfection. He knows that once he gets his first job, the GPA won't matter so much, but GPA is a barrier to getting the first one. And quite frankly, even getting involved in research when your GPA is below 3.0 is difficult. So he feels backed into a corner with no future. And he has no idea, if he didn't do this, what he would want to do; this is what he's really interested in.
For now, we're waiting for the response from his advisor. Any thoughts from the forum, though?
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