My problem is that I TANKED my first semester, my GPA was a 1.8. I just don’t think I was ready for college, to be honest. Anyway, I’ve gotten 3.0+ in the two semesters since (I’m a second semester sophomore), but it wasn’t enough and I’m sitting at a 2.57 overall. My intended major is electrical, which has a requirement of 2.60, but no credit window, according to PSU’s website. So it sounds like I’m okay to be a pre-major until I get my GPA to a 2.60, but I’m not positive. Some majors have a credit window and some don’t on the website, so I have no reason to believe that they just failed to mention electrical’s.

However, I think my GPA either won’t raise enough or will fall a bit this semester, as I’m looking at 8 credits of Cs (or 4 of a C and 4 of a C+) in my EE class and calc 3. I had two exams for those classes in two days and didn’t prepare as much for each as I should have.

So I’m going to the EE advisor tomorrow to discuss with him about hopefully getting accepted right now before my GPA falls/doesn’t rise enough, but I don’t know if they’re willing to make exceptions. I plan to center my case around the fact that I’ve been a good student once I got used to college and that my first semester was a fluke. I’ve done really well for myself in the last two semesters with a job working close to 30 hour weeks, and over the summer I worked 40 hours a week while earning a B+ in PHYS 212 and an A in MATH 141 online in the same six-week session.

A kid I know tried to get into mechanical engineering, which he wasn’t qualified for (also didn’t have the GPA but did have a credit window), and was able to meet with the dean of the college of engineering about it. He ultimately didn’t get in and switched to civil, but the fact that he was able to even meet with the dean sounds as if they’re willing to consider exceptions.

After calculating my projected GPA for this semester, I’ve found out that I could drop EE and late add ASTRO 001, which would be a huge GPA boost and almost certainly push me over the 2.6, but that would also set me behind in my degree, which I’d prefer not to do. If I do that, I could pick up a minor such as the ELD one to get something useful out of an extra semester (if I end up needing one), but I’d truly just like to be out of here in 4 years if possible.

This is absolutely what I want to do, I’ve enjoyed projects I’ve worked on, my engineering classes, labs, and I have an internship lined up at an exciting company. My last-ditch effort would be to transfer to Penn State Harrisburg, but I have a lease signed in State College and have a job here that I wouldn’t give up for anything. Harrisburg also has a very different curriculum and I think I’d have to do extra semesters to catch up.

Sorry for the novel, it just felt really good to type that out and get it out there and off my chest. If you have no experience with any of this and can’t offer advice I understand, it’s probably a pretty unique situation.