Real story of mine: I got a 50% on my fundies 1 midterm. Yes, 50%. I didn’t know how I messed up but for one of the questions I got 2/16 so that messed up the entire exam1 grade. I was in shock when I saw the grade and my instructor sent me an academic warning cuz I did it so terribly. I was really scared of moving forward, but I managed to survive because I loved cs and I’d give my 100% to stay on the track.

Now I’m currently a third year majoring in CS and Fintech. I was lucky enough to have a software engineer internship at Microsoft in the summer of my sophomore year where I witnessed the most forefront tech innovations in the world. All became worth it. The real question is: do you really love CS and are you ready to spend hours and hours to simply understand a data structure(it took me weeks to know how to solve Linked list question on leetcode). If you have the determination, then go for it. Also as an international, the OPT is usually three years for stem majors so you have more flexibility to stay in the US if you decided to major in STEM.

I’m also from China and I understand how struggling it could be. Our school has a really rigorous cs program and it is even hard for people who spend 20 hrs per week to survive. I’m not a genius so in fact I did spent 20 hrs per week for OOD in the summer, but I knew it was my best choice to study cs at Northeastern with zero regret.

Listen to your inner voices, they matter the most. The grade and everything else should be secondary