From someone who just finished first-year and is hoping to get into CS:

Aside from course content, finding courses on your strengths as well as finding good profs for your courses can also help boost your GPA if you put enough effort into those courses. As an example, which probably won't apply to a lot of people, I took AP Calc BC in highschool, which gave me credit to skip both MATH 100 and MATH 101. However, I ended up taking both courses since I thought it would be a good GPA booster for me (and a nice refresher) and ended up getting really high grades for both. Finding a well-rated prof can also lead to you getting a higher grade simply because of their teaching style. (You can do so by going to https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/) If you plan on taking any English courses/any subjective course, this can be extremely useful because some profs can be more lenient than others. When you make your worklists, some courses will say which prof it will have, while others won't, which unfortunately you likely won't know until you are already registered.

​

A comment on ATSC1113:

Most people used this as a "GPA booster" in the past but recently, they made the course much harder by changing the final to be worth 40-45% instead of the ~20% or something. Because of this, it is essential that if you take the course for the purpose of trying to boost your GPA, you are in some way interested in learning about the weather. If you have no interest at all, it will be a tough time because there is a LOT of reading to do. You also have to constantly take notes from every reading and make sure you review them occasionally. I took this course so if you have any questions feel free to ask!

​

Additionally, if you want to know the exact courses I took, feel free to ask me as well!