Disastrous term- am I screwed?

[dcvg]

Due to certain problems that arose for me halfway through the term, it is ending up to be a disaster for me. I am certain that I'm gonna fail atleast 2 classes... possibly 3 and I will barely skate by on the remaining two. Will I be kicked out of the program? My first year performace was very good but this term due to certain things I pretty much crashed and burned starting November. I'm really afraid so as to what's gonna happen.

[Superskull85]

I would talk to an academic advisor and see if there is any way that you could make up for the possibly failed courses, or possibly continue in the program (or even see if those failed courses will result in a discontinuation in the program or not). Talking to your professors might help as well.

Also if you have not written your final exams, than you might be able to raise your mark just enough to pass and move on in the program by getting a good grade on the exams. My experience so far is that final exams affect your mark considerably, and could ultimately decide whether you pass or fail a course.

[jbking]

I'll second the talking to an academic advisor as if there were exceptional circumstances there may be various ways to handle the situation, e.g. taking an incomplete in a course or a special extension for some things. There are a few other questions such as whether or not this is for an Honor's program or not as well as a few other factors as there were a couple of times where my situation was similar to yours in some regards. For example, I remember very well in the start of my second year, some of the advanced courses I took being hard enough that some of us in the class considered dropping down to the regular course to try to keep our scholarships which required maintaining an 80% average. In another case, I struggled to get through a course in Concurrent Programming, finishing with the barely passing grade of 50 dead on in the course after failing every assignment in the course.

I also know of a friend who both in undergraduate and in graduate courses has had to take incompletes or do work to make-up for courses due to various situations that arose for her such as motor vehicle accidents or having a rough fall that took out of school for a few months, though I may be missing some details as I don't know all of what happened to her.

[Dan]

dcvg @ 10th December 2009, 12:32 pm wrote:

Will I be kicked out of the program?

Thats hard to say with out knowing your program or university, however it should be easy enought for you to find out by looking at your universites course claandar and deparments pollices.

I know many universies have somthing called academic probation, where rather then kicking a student out of the program for falling below the stated excpetations they will put them on academic probation, meaning that the student has to meet a areged aponed set of requierments to stay enroled (a last chance).

As sugested above i would recomend talking to academic advising but also to your profsesors to see what you can do to raise your grade and possible the deparment chair about going on academic probtation rather then getting kicked out (if it is indeed that bad).


It's proably to late but most universites will let you drop a course before a certin point and have it not count aginsted you. It's noraml a good idea to drop a course if you think you will fail before this date.

[dcvg]

I looked up the policies and apparently Waterloo allows you to fail 3 units (6 courses) so I should be safe. Suck that it's always gonna be on my transcript though.

[Dan]

dcvg @ 10th December 2009, 2:15 pm wrote:

I looked up the policies and apparently Waterloo allows you to fail 3 units (6 courses) so I should be safe. Suck that it's always gonna be on my transcript though.

There noramly is a minium average and a maxium number of times you can take a course. I would still at the very least talk to your profesors about how you can improve your marks.

[Tony]

If the faculty is aware of the special circumstances (via program advisers), you might be able to defer the exams until a later time.

The UW CS requires a minimum "major average" to graduate. I'm not sure if that's applicable on term standings.

Cutting your allowed failures in half this early is not the best option. It's certainly in your best interest to keep them "just in case" for upper year classes. As well, having used up those, the faculty begins to assume that one might not make it through the program, and seem to care less about student's needs (as it appears to be the case with a friend of mine, who just gets told to consider "easier" majors every time to talks to an adviser).

[Prabhakar Ragde]

dcvg @ Thu Dec 10, 2009 2:15 pm wrote:

I looked up the policies and apparently Waterloo allows you to fail 3 units (6 courses) so I should be safe.

You're safe in the way someone who fell off a high building is safe at the halfway point. You need to deploy a parachute.

You have to maintain a continuation average. You have to exclude failed courses and you can choose to exclude low passing grades, but you must repeat all required excluded courses. Don't jump to the conclusion that things that happened this term were unique and they won't happen again. Do some serious thinking about what went wrong and how you can put yourself gently on firm ground next term. Otherwise that firm ground is going to smack you pretty hard.

[Euphoracle]

Well put.

[ecookman]

slightly off topic, if they kicked you out, would there be a way to go back on academic probation.


ALTHOUGH NOT RECOMMENDED TO STRIVE TO DO THIS!