Are physicists looked down upon if

[penzoate]

, I was just curious, do other physics majors with a 3.5 or higher consider physics majors with a GPA between a 2.5 and 3.0 let's intelligent in areas in physics. Do fellow physics majors consider the physics knowledge the physics major with a 2.5 GPA learn outside the classroom?

Or are they just labeled as a dunce by fellow classmates?

 

[Cyrus]

Anyone with a 2.5 GPA, is in serious trouble.

 

[JasonRox]

Anyone with a 2.5 GPA, is in serious trouble.

I agree.

I think what other people think of you is the last thing you should thinking about when your GPA is lower than 3.5.

 

[penzoate]

I agree.

I think what other people think of you is the last thing you should thinking about when your GPA is lower than 3.5.

I've only taken one my first year physics courl and received a C+ in that class. There are a lot of smart physics majors who's GPA is below a 3.5 and have manage to go onto graudate school to study what they love

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

Do fellow physics majors consider the physics knowledge the physics major with a 2.5 GPA learn outside the classroom?

I don't really have the authority to answer your main question, but I am wondering if maybe you are taking on too much work? When you say you have knowledge from "outside the classroom" does that mean that you are working on extra stuff like reading extra physics books on different topics etc? I think that it would be wise to focus on only what is getting graded upon until your marks come up.

 

[mathwonk]

i envy people with a 3.0 or 2.5 gpa, as i had a 1.2 gpa.

just before i got kicked out of school. gpa schmeepa. what you can do matters, school grades are child's play.

 

[penzoate]

what is the average GPA of most of the physicists on this forum. Like I said, I am a freshman and only taken my first introductory physics courses. I have a C+ average now. I want to know grades of other physicists, including the grade of physicists , who improved there academic performance throughout there 4 years. I really want to earn an A in most of my physics courses.

 

[Cyrus]

i envy people with a 3.0 or 2.5 gpa, as i had a 1.2 gpa.

just before i got kicked out of school. gpa schmeepa. what you can do matters, school grades are child's play.

Companies LOVEEEE to hire fresh graduates with 1.2-2.5 GPAs, yeah, grades don't matter, right...

If you don't have serious advice to give the kid, don't waste his time.

Penzoate, you are going to have to study a lot harder if you want an A. Everyone has different methods of studying that works best for them. I suggest you find what is holding you back and overcome that issue.

 

[mathwonk]

just learn the concepts, and you will be fine. screw the grades.

 

[mathwonk]

you guys are so young and naive. you think qualifications are on paper.

 

[mathwonk]

a suggestion: ask yourself if there is anyone on this forum you would hire. without seeing their resume. see what i mean about resumes?

 

[imastud]

just learn the concepts, and you will be fine. screw the grades.

well i am a young and naive kid, but it seems to me getting the grades is better than learning the concepts (while in school) because you can always go back and learn the concepts, but you only have one chance to get a good grade.

 

[Cyrus]

a suggestion: ask yourself if there is anyone on this forum you would hire. without seeing their resume. see what i mean about resumes?

Um, no. I don't see what you mean, because that's not how companies hire people. They look at your resume, and when they see a fresh graduate with a 2.5 GPA staring them at the face, they are going to throw it into the trash pile and move on to the people who were serious in college.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

Not familiar with US scoring terms etc. but if GPA is that one which determines if you get into uni or not then I don't think it matters as long as you get in. In Australia no one really cares about your ENTER (unless maybe it's 99.95) as long as you get in the course and do well in it.

Also low ENTER (And GPA if it's the same thing) really has nothing to do with intelligence. I hate to sound narcissistic but I was literally the smartest guy at my school. I could grasp concepts and learn quicker then everyone, and not only did I understand the concepts but I could link them together and I know know the intricacies and details and where they came from etc. etc. But did I get 99.95? No, I didn't because I didn't do any homework, the amount of work I did during high school was literally none, I would have failed chem had I not topped the class in the midyear exam. That's how little homework I did, so ENTER/GPA is really no better measure of intelligence then IQ, and anyone who is stupid enough to think you're less intelligent because you got a low GPA/ENTER shouldn't be doing physics.

 

[Cyrus]

You're GPA is your overall grade in college. It shows how much time and effort you put into your classes and how seriously you took them. Someone who has a low gpa is either lazy, or stupid.

This is not High School Grades, don't compare the two.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

I see, if the GPA thing is your overall grade then you're in trouble if it's low, higher score = more chance to get a good job.

As to whether people think your stupid because you got a 2.5 GPA, I doubt it, that would be jumping to conclusions.

 

[J77]

OP: If you consider physicists outside of the classroom - you should also consider that a GPA matters little (or has little meaning) outside of the US.

 

[eep]

You're GPA is your overall grade in college. It shows how much time and effort you put into your classes and how seriously you took them. Someone who has a low gpa is either lazy, or stupid.

Or just got unlucky when the professors decided what questions to put on the final! 50% of your grade based on one test? Come on!

 

[JasonRox]

you guys are so young and naive. you think qualifications are on paper.

I understand what you're saying. But the problem is that the professors are naive about grades. Not us students.

I'm forced to do fairly well or else professors won't listen to me at all.

 

[Ja4Coltrane]

I would like to mention that I think that a low GPA really does not say much about your intelligence. It really does not mean you are lazy either, it really means that you have gotten into a bad cycle of not doing your work and therefore feeling like you can't do it and eventually thinking that you are not smart enough. But you are smart enough--I did very poorly in school for two years. I actually though for a while that the problem was my lack of intelligence--that's what happens, but let me tell you this: I now do very well, and I know that I am one of the smartest people at my school (and my high school is #66 in the nation).

 

[robphy]

Are you referring to a GPA-in-the-major or an overall GPA (including non-major possibly-less-interesting courses)?

The GPA is but one indicator of ability... but it's not necessarily reliable. Folks can get good grades by getting good marks on homework and exams... without necessarily understanding the material. (I'm not even going into issues of cheating, grade inflation, etc...) Regardless of a student's GPA, I still ask the student questions to probe the depth and breadth of their knowledge.

Certainly, it's better to have a better GPA than a poorer one... but some mastery of the material [even if it comes a semester or so too late] should be the main goal.

If your GPA doesn't reflect your talent,

• find out why
  [what is your stumbling block? study habits? math? lack of interest or motivation?]
  and try to fix it
  [get help. work with folks who know their stuff. study harder. read more books.]
• find other ways that do
  [are you better in the lab than with your nose in a book?]

 

[CPL.Luke]

you should try and get a 3.0 because otherwise it becomes very difficult to get through to grad school and all that.

but once your through the door it doesn't matter, what will matter is your understanding of the material. I'd like to see the poor sap who tries o tell his advisor "but, I came in with a 3.8"

also a year or two after your out of college nobody will care what your grades were, just how smart you are.

EDIT: also people on this forum seem to believe that its a linear model of going to college, going to grad school, and then gettig a good job because they had good grades. That is a very boring life, if your feeling a bit buned out take a year off and do all the things you've been wanting to do. Be a ski bum, see the world, join the peace core. My father decided that he wanted to be a ski bum after college and lived in new hampshire for a year, then he spent the nex decade doing strange and interesting things around the country, including livin in a trailer. Now he's the head of sales for a major cosmetics packaging company, and handles millions of dollars worth of sales. Same thing happened with my step-mother, she didn't get serious about her career till she turned 30 or so, now she's the director of purcahsing for a very major cosmetics company.

life is not a linear progression, and they're are some things that you can only do when your young, if you want to do them go out and do them. You have your whole life to become a phd.

 

[berkeman]

Yeah, a 3.0 (/4.0) GPA (or lower) would be a red flag for me if I were reading an applicant's resume. But then again, I work in a fairly elite R&D lab, and for many years we've only interviewed and hired the very best applicants. For a more general job, maybe the 3.0 would be less of a red flag.

I graduated 2nd in my high school class, and basically didn't need to study very much to achieve that. But when I went to college, I got my butt kicked for the first year, because my study habits were not good enough. But I buckled down, improved my studying (including many 50-60 hour study weeks outside of class), started doing just about every problem in every chapter, and brought my grades up to basically straight-A's. I finished undergrad with a 3.7 GPA overall and above 3.9 in my technical classes, and went on to graduate school on a scholarship.

So your grades do matter a lot in some places (like if you ever apply to where I work or many other Silicon Valley companies), and if you work hard (and figure out how to work as well as you can with good study habits), you should be able to raise your GPA up into the mid-3's at least, IMO. Eliminate the other distractions during school time, and develop good study habits and techniques. Be positive. Relax and focus.

 

[mathwonk]

couldn't i be both lazy AND stupid?

 

[FrogPad]

Um, no. I don't see what you mean, because that's not how companies hire people. They look at your resume, and when they see a fresh graduate with a 2.5 GPA staring them at the face, they are going to throw it into the trash pile and move on to the people who were serious in college.

I agree with you. However, I'd like to point out the importance of personal relationships with others in the workplace. A fresh graduate personally recommended by an employee has a great chance of landing a job. GPA is important, but it's not the be-all, end-all.

 

[mathwonk]

i agree. to be honest i'll admit that a high gpa is better than a low one. but i am very aware too that if you are willing to get serious and have ability, anything can be overcome. although i did indeed have a 1.2 gpa freshman year in college, it led to being kicked out of school.

in grad school, the second time, i had a 4.0, and it led to receiving the university presidents fellowship. but the 1.2 gpa did not end my world. i got another chance.

oh and in grad school there was another kid with a low gpa, who was so smart, that he was awarded the same fellowship i had, just for essentially asking one question in class. he was the kind of person who immediately impresses you just when they open their mouth once.

when i graduated i got three job offers in a tight market, but when he graduated he received 10 job offers, including ones at every ivy league school, before he even wrote up his dissertation. so basically his resume was just word of mouth. that is the one that really matters.

it is only if nobody knows you that they have to look at the resume.

 

[mathwonk]

ill try to give an example. we were sitting around at lunch, me, my friend, and a world class topologist, when the subject of the hopf map came up, i think, or something about a 3 manifold. the famous topologist said he had trouble visualizing the topic under discussion, when my friend said he had a nice way to picture it, and just drew the guy a picture of a link or something.

that was all it took. that kids resume was written for the next 3-4 years right there. the topologist asked me afterwards "who is that guy? he is really good."

that kind of thing means more than all the A's in college courses you can have.

 

[mathwonk]

the nsf used to have a paper describing how to measure the quality of a research scientist, that i read once. it included things like money raised, number of people supervised, and papers and so on, but the number one measure was "the impression the person makes on you as a scientist when you meet him[her]."

your gpa may get you an interview, but then you have to interview well. and if you don't have an interview, you can make one over lunch, or during a question and answer session after a talk.

It happened to me once too. A famous geometer was speaking at length in an invited talk, I was in the audience, being studiously ignored by all the higher level people trying to rub elbows with him, when at the very end the speaker posed a question he did not know the answer to.

As it happened I had answered a similar question in my thesis so i answered it for him. He almost fell off the podium coming over to ask me more. later at harvard he asked me for more details. when i went out of my way to make time to give them to him, he more than repaid me the next day by giving me a tutorial from his vastly greater knowledge.

 

[Mororvia]

As others have said, better grades will mean more opportunities for you. I was lucky to get into my Masters program. I had a 2.5 GPA in my undergrad with about the same with classes in my major(physics) too actually. I'm very grateful for the opportunity they gave me. I average about 3.0 now. Part of my problem was laziness and the other part was workload.

Currently, I take 2 courses per semester at 4 credits a piece and I'll be finished in 2 years (plus some research credits). At my previous school I would have 12 credits but 3 credits a piece so that would be 4 courses, each with plenty of homework to give out. So, if workload is one of your problems, I suggest substituting some easier courses that don't require much of you if you can. Better study habits can help too obviously.

Good luck

 

[TMFKAN64]

I will agree with mathwonk that it is far better to be a genius than to have a high GPA.

I will also agree that no one cares about your grades after you have some real experience. However, if you are a mere mortal without much work experience, you had better keep your GPA as high as possible...

 

[verty]

I think there's also a psychological side to this matter. If someone is struggling and you pound them about how important grades are, they will only start to feel inferior, like they can't do it. They will become despondent and reluctant to try hard.

And presumably telling people who are stuggling that grades are very important is only likely to make them try harder, not try smarter. If their grades are low, they probably don't know how to improve, so trying harder will only bring negative results.

Perhaps if that person steps back and focuses on the material and the concepts, they will get back into shape so their grades can improve. More haste, less speed.

 

[marcusl]

That's right, verty. Penzoate, starting college is a big step, and poor grades the first semester of physics aren't fatal or even unusual. Your high school classes may not have prepared you properly, you may be facing a higher level of competition, or you may need to change your style to match your surroundings (different teaching style, different learning style...).

The most important thing is to analyze why you didn't do better: did you have social distractions, too heavy a load, not enough studying, gaps in your physics/math background? Your teacher and section leader can help you here. Then work on changing or improving those things. Fill in gaps with extra help in math or physics concepts, and tutoring (many departments and grad students will offer help to undergrads). Don't panic, and don't worry about image or consider other majors unless you've made changes and you're still getting C's sophomore year.

 

[fizziks]

2.5 in your physics courses = bad
2.5 overall = ain't so bad that'll you'll be denied to every school you apply

Seriously, why should physics committees look at that D you got in history and a general ed class and not your As in quantum mechanics or thermodynamics...

Most american schools require you to take 70+ credit hours of general ed classes that has jack **** to do with your major coursework out of the 120ish required to graduate. In fact, most public US schools you don't actually start working on your major until the 3rd year. I didn't start doing my major upper level courses until my 3rd year. I go to one of the top 15 public US schools.

 

[Maxwell]

I think a lot of people are missing the fact that the original poster is just in his first year.

Don't worry about it man, just do your best from now on. You can most certainly raise your GPA to a very respectful range - that's for sure. Just don't get too worried and work hard at it, and you will be fine. A 2.5 at the end of freshman year is not the end of the world. You're just getting used to college.

Good luck.

 

[Noone1982]

What kills me, I transferred with a 3.5 GPA with a good amount of credits. Now all those good grades don't get counted toward my new GPA :(

My GPA is entirely built upon Emag 1 and 2, Quantum Mechanics, etc, etc! D'oh!

 

[kdinser]

The biggest problem is learning how to study effectivly for these kinds of classes, here is what I found works best for me. I wish I had found this out my first trip through college or my first couple semesters back, but...

Your mileage may vary.

1. Do the assigned homework as soon as possible after it's assigned. Use notes/books/internet to their best advantage.

2. Any problems that you had trouble with (took more then a 30 mins to an hour to figure out or solve) do again right away. Just toss your previous work aside and try to do the problem again; if it takes you any more then half the time to solve it again (use book, notes, internet), you are probably lacking knowledge in some area, such as math or the material. If it's taking you more then an hour for a problem, go and see the professor or TA right away or move on to the next problem until you can meet with one of them. If all the problems are giving you trouble, again, go see your professor or TA and or move on to another subject until you can because you are obviously missing something vital and working on problems that you lack the skill or knowledge to solve is a waste of time. If you find that you have extra time left over after doing your other homework, by all means, go back and work on the problems that you couldn’t solve right away. This is an important time management skill that took me a long time to master, don't waste to much time beating your head against something you don't understand, get help before you waste 5 to 8 hours of valuable study time.

3. Wait 2 or 3 days and do the homework again. This works great if you do it right before attempting a new batch of homework for the 1st time. This time, try and rely less on the book and other resources, but don’t waste too much time trying to remember a formula or derivation. Unless the work was very simple, it should take you about 1/3 of the time to do it the second time around.

4. If time permits, do the homework completely over a 3rd time. This 3rd time, it should only take you about 20 mins if it took you 2 hours or so the first time and you should hardly have to look at another resource.

5. Finally, reread the material one last time before the exam to make sure your not missing anything. The stuff from the problems should just kind of leap out at you by this point and shouldn’t consume very much time.

What you are doing:

1. Building familiarity with the material itself.

2. Learning the thinking processes that are usually central to solving those kinds of problems without burdening yourself with a totally new problem. For example, it’s easy to know that you did something wrong, either the first time or second time, if your are doing the same problem over and getting a different result.

3. Building confidence in the material. If you can walk into a test knowing that you can solve every homework problem in 5 to 30 mins (depending on the material), you will be much less likely to be surprised by a problem on the test or horrified by the length of the test.

I've noticed that in the last year of using this technique that I've gone from getting 3.0 to 3.3's in my math/problem solving classes to 3.7's to 4.0's. Even when I see a problem I've never encountered before, I'm usually able to blaze through the other problems so quickly that I don't run out of time reasoning it out. In the past, the problems that were similar to the homework would take up so much time that I didn't have time to think about the couple problems that were really trying to test my understanding of the material. It meant I could pass, I just couldn’t do as well as I wanted.

BTW, I'm not spending more time studying then I did before, I'm just getting a lot more out of my time.

 

[mathwonk]

hear hear! study habits are key. i often spend almost every office hour alone until just before a test.

 

[berkeman]

Great stuff, kdinser. I'd also add doing the last few problems in each texbook problem set (usually the hardest ones), as long as the answers are in the back of the book so you can check them (like the odd ones in many books). Great idea about going back and blazing through the homework assignments, though. I hadn't heard of that one.

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

I found this useful...

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/chapman.htm

 

[Beeza]

hear hear! study habits are key. i often spend almost every office hour alone until just before a test.

That just made me think of an interesting question. Mathwonk, as a professor, do you enjoy it when students stop by to ask questions? Even if they are the most basic questions? I've stopped by some of my professors offices before when stumped on the homework, I and feel like I'm being a bother.

 

[chroot]

This whole thread seems to be permeated with all kinds of defense mechanisms. Apparently people have a lot of bad feelings about their GPAs.

Mathwonk is a professor who constantly berates students for being stupid, or not trying hard enough, or not being serious enough. Yet, he was also the proud recipient of a boot in the ass for failing out of his freshman year. That's pretty telling, psychologically, and I'm sure that his dismissal has led him to detest students who basically remind him of himself. In this very thread he's demeaning students who don't come to his office hours regularly, but I'm rather sure that he wasn't spending much time in his professors' offices when he was sailing along with that 1.2 GPA. Sad, but true. It's also led him to this notion that "grades don't matter," much like a child will stop caring about his score in a game he can't play well.

We also have cyrusabdollahi, who presumably has good grades, and thinks anyone who doesn't also have good grades is lazy, or stupid, or, more likely, both, and does not deserve to even find gainful employment.

Both are defense mechanisms -- people trying to rationalize themselves as being intelligent and worthy. Mathwonk rationalizes this by believing that his math skills are what matter, and his poor grades were meaningless. Cyrus uses his good grades (and likely job potential) for the same purpose.

Between all of these polar defense mechanism is the truth: Grades matter. Grades matter a lot, at least if you're in the middle 90% of the population. If you happen to be one of the one-in-a-million genius types, feel free to skip class, call your teachers names, and spit on their tests. For everyone else, if you want to be recognized, have an easy time getting a job, and generally make life a smoother ride, try to get good grades. You don't have to lock yourself in your dorm room, afraid that if you don't get a 4.0 that no one will hire you. Just get decent grades, recognize that they're important, but not so important that they define who you are, or cast in stone your future opportunities.

- Warren

 

[JasonRox]

That just made me think of an interesting question. Mathwonk, as a professor, do you enjoy it when students stop by to ask questions? Even if they are the most basic questions? I've stopped by some of my professors offices before when stumped on the homework, I and feel like I'm being a bother.

I find that they don't care at all.

The only way they would care is if you show no effort at all. If they're explaining ideas to you, and you're just sitting there waiting for the answer and not listening, they will hate it. In fact, they might even just give you the answer straight up and you won't learn much that way.

 

[jtbell]

A 2.5 at the end of freshman year is not the end of the world. You're just getting used to college.

I agree. Heck, we've had some students goof off through sophomore year, then see the light, bust their guts during the remaining two years and do very well in their upper-level courses. Their overall GPA's weren't great, but the trend was obvious in their transcripts, and we took care to point out the turnaround in our letters of recommendation for them. As far as we know, they've turned out well.

(Most of our students don't go to grad school in physics, though... mostly engineering.)

 

[leon1127]

I go to school because I want to learn. Do you too?

 

[Kurdt]

I tend to agree with Chroot's assessment of the whole deal. Grades obviously help you enormously for job interviews and the like and are thus more important as a prospective employer will rarely give you a chance to show your ability. I am unfortunate to be in a situation where I have no ability to study at all but managed to get through my degree with a good grade. I regret the fact that I never studied as hard as my fellow students because although I have the grades and the degree my actual knowledge is not what it should be (as some people will know from the schoolboy errors I ocassionally make in the forums). I am now going through all my textbooks and doing all the exercises like Berkeman said he had done to raise my overall levels of knowledge.

If physics is something you really want to do then don't make the mistakes lots of people in this thread have done (including me) and start getting into good habits sooner rather than later.

 

[Cyrus]

I'm sorry, but I'm forced to ask this...how the hell do you people get "Good Grades" by not studying the material? Teachers giving you the answer when you go to their office hours? Professors accepting late assigments? What kind of school do you go to? Mickey Mouse Univ? Over here, you have to work hard to earn your A's. If you go to their office hours, they give you guidance, not solutions. Reading through these posts makes me glad I don't go to some of your schools. Sorry.

 

[leright]

I'm sorry, but I'm forced to ask this...how the hell do you people get "Good Grades" by not studying the material? Teachers giving you the answer when you go to their office hours? Professors accepting late assigments? What kind of school do you go to? Mickey Mouse Univ? Over here, you have to work hard to earn your A's. If you go to their office hours, they give you guidance, not solutions. Reading through these posts makes me glad I don't go to some of your schools. Sorry.

Maybe they are just smart, I dunno. I have to work very hard for my grades.

 

[mathwonk]

yes i enjoy questions. the thing i appreciate about my students is effort and curiosity, much more than ability. ability is a gift, what we do with it is our stewardship of that gift and shows our character. character of course is something that must be built up, and many were like me and had little of it as young students.

I recall office hours being a mixture of pleasure and frustration, once e.g. spending 3-4 hours in an office "hour" helping a student understand the difference between an integral and an antiderivative.

the pleasure comes when a student who has never understood the idea behind the fundamental theorem, finally at 7:30 at night after 2 hours or more, says "oh so the integral of a step function must be differentiable everywhere except right at the edge of the step, and the slope of the integral is just the height of the step!"

you beam with joy, but then the frustration comes the next week when the student drops the course because they just do not have 2-3 hours every night to understand a one hour lecture.

the many students who withdraw because the impending grade is not what they desire, are a strain on your energy and resources. The most difficult task is to help someone understand who is not trying to understand.

I am not the professor for everyone. When I have the energy and patience I will try to encourage a true seeker after knowledge. Other times I hope just my knowledge and experience will be of some value.

 

[Kurdt]

90% of the grade for our modules was from the exam. So you can get away with 3 weeks of revision (or vision) and spend the rest of the time slacking if you wish. Saying that, I've always been able to just study for a week or two for an exam and spend the rest of the time off. In the UK most grades are based primarily on the exam. When I was in college doing A-levels I had only 33% attendance for most lectures yet I achieved the highest grade in all three science subjects and even achieved 100% on two biology papers. Like I said above I do regret this now because I don't retain as much knowledge of what I have done and its only recently that I've started to catch up.

I am a slightly unusual case though as I later discovered I have Asperger Syndrome. This means I have excellent rote memory.

 

[berkeman]

The most difficult task is to help someone understand who is not trying to understand.

Well said.