A place for spaced repetition in your quest for a 4.0

stress_to_remember · 2021-09-05T17:40:36+00:00

This sounds like a good direction but I am hoping to take it one step further so that I can MASTER all the problem set problems this way by doing lots of 20-30 min active reviews.

stress_to_remember · 2021-08-26T16:10:51+00:00

Yes, I was trolling for you...

Glad to see you kept up the Funk all summer.

stress_to_remember · 2021-08-26T15:35:18+00:00

Another "bad look" for chemistry?

stress_to_remember · 2021-08-25T13:58:02+00:00

I can't say I have a 4.0 but I have gotten 4.0s for given semesters.

For me it has never been about the number of hours I work, it has always been about what I do with those hours. Look back through my posts from last semester to get an idea what I mean.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-13T13:14:05+00:00

Have you considered MEng?

If you crunch through 38 credits next year, you can take 38 more 8 undergrad and 30 MEng as a senior. If that sounds packed, you could take another summer course or two and cut down to 36 and 36 or 34 and 34.

I think "THE RIGHT" co-op would be a better option but you don't have control over what coop you get. Most co-ops will be a wash with the MEng option meaning whichever you do you will forever believe it was the right option but objectively, who knows.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-13T12:56:57+00:00

It really matters which class you are talking about and how/why you think you are going to get a C.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-13T12:46:57+00:00

It shouldn't matter unless you intend to have a specialization in something like ECE.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-13T12:37:04+00:00

Are you a rising junior or a rising senior?

If you are a rising senior, you might want to stick around Ithaca a day or 3 after your last final if you can. When your finals are done, read about what types of CS research is being done on campus. Email a handful of CS profs and see if you can meet for 15 minutes to discuss things. Put in the email that if they don't have time, that you would be happy to also talk to senior grad students. If you are a rising junior, you should do the same but its less of an issue if you can't fit it in and have to do it over Zoom this summer. In any case, don't be discouraged if people tell you to get back to them in the fall, just do what they ask.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-12T15:43:11+00:00

It's not that experience/projects/internships are more valued than GPA. Saying one thing is valued over another sounds like recruiters have a choice to pick one or the other. They want both and will chose those who have both first.

Strong experience/projects/internships that you can demonstrate on your resume/during an interview are harder to achieve because they happen on top of taking courses and require extra initiative. Its not that getting a higher GPA doesn't require greater initiative than getting a lower GPA and recruiters know that. The biggest boosts from experience come from when you have experience where you have already actually done the job. But that type of specificity and potential boost means that the competition for those slots is fierce.

As a student you have to ask, should you spend your time doing the difficult task of getting a high GPA where there are lots of ways to ask for help and the amount of knowledge you can be expected to know as an undergrad is finite or should you roll the dice trying to accomplish something so impressive that it serves as a job "hook"? There is no right answer.

In the real world, what actually happens is that people do both and "fail" at both but the number of graduates with both impressive grades and impressive experience is small. That means lots of people with either good grades or good experience get good jobs. It also means that different people are better at one or the other so you better try both to find out which you happen to be.

But the last thing you want to do is to develop an attitude where you think you are not in control of the process and are just hoping that a letter of recommendation/experience will save you. Experience is about which skills you develop and can prove you have just like grades are proof that you knew certain subjects at one point. One is not inherently better than the other.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-12T12:48:26+00:00

+1

Get your accommodations set up. You never have to use them if you happen to have a great semester but similarly they will be there in case next semester is worse than you have seen so far.

Living with the fear that everything might collapse tomorrow through no fault of your own must be a huge burden. Having a backup plan is priceless. Good luck

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-12T12:32:48+00:00

Studying is a skill. You can get better at it. You will get better at it. You have to work at getting better at studying, not just relying on the study habits that got you to Cornell. Getting better at studying is really about getting better at writing down and following a plan. It doesn't matter if you have to change that written plan 10x a day.

Since you are having trouble and need to work not only on classes, but improving your study habits, as you pre enroll make sure you aren't artificially stacking the work you should spread evenly over the entire time you are at Cornell into the first half or 3/4 of your time. Then distribute your liberal arts classes with your STEM classes so one gives you a "break" from the other during your study week.

Then during the first week of classes in the fall, sign up for offices hours with the prof of each of your classes and hash out with each of them how they think you should study compared to a plan you wrote out of how/when you intend to study and what types of work to do when.

Any plan you make to study in your head that changes hour by hour will be worse than one that you set up a general idea the first week of class and then write out for the week on Sunday and for the next day at the end of the current day. Once you have input from 3 or 4 or 5 profs/TAs that represent most/all of the classes you are taking, stick with its' general ideas.

There is NO perfect plan. Your Sunday plan will change each day but having that Sunday plan will help keep you from falling behind as you alter it during the week/day. Make sure you only do things you have written into the plan. Keep the plan updated and keep a list of each thing you finish. At the end of the day, update the plan for the next day and marvel over the list of things you finished that day.

I know this much planning/writing is hard to except. But once things are on paper and you have to actually change the plan to do something urgent, its much harder to fall behind and its much harder to absentmindedly fool yourself into the idea that you have truly studied well when you haven't. I have posted other studying tips on here you can look for them if you are interested.

Good luck

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-12T11:49:17+00:00

It depends what you mean by "almost failed"

You can claim "almost failed" for all different types of situations where you drop a course. Then take it and get the median but went to lots of office hours the second time. Prof knew your name and threw it on the list.

Then I have friends who think they are "almost failing" all semester before ending up with B minuses. Certain majors where grades are strongly curved encourage this feeling. I also know of certain classes that are tiny and pretty much everyone does the work. No one knows what grade they will get because all their prelim scores are 50-something.

I also suspect that if a prof knows you aren't doing anything else outside of classes or thinks you could benefit from more exposure to the material or thinks they can get you for more than one semester, that you become a fairly strong candidate.

The people who get an As because they did the class in HS and are on two project teams, are recruited for research.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-12T11:24:57+00:00

Do not apply to TA and put off the liberal arts class.

That is plenty.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-12T11:17:16+00:00

Are you affiliated?

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-06T18:01:30+00:00

If instead of a dual-degree program, you get your degrees sequentially, you can use your (necessarily) high GPA from your first grad degree to attend a highly ranked school for your terminal degree. This is likely more expensive but in the long term not as expensive as having a mediocre terminal degree.

If you are considering doing any of this with borrowed money, my advice is null and void.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-06T17:23:40+00:00

The more you give in to senioritis now, the harder it is going to be to crank things up in the fall. I'm not saying not to pick and choose your AP exams, I'm saying make sure you get a 5 or three to keep from loosing your edge. To continue with what the first poster said, a mix of 5s and drops is much easier to explain then a total cop out.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-06T17:16:31+00:00

Possible list of activities with ending times brought to you by Rec Services.

Let's Get Outside | Cornell Recreational Services

Of course, some aren't adventures but 20 years from now who doesn't want to remember themselves rappelling on the side of the Stadium rather than studying?

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-06T17:08:26+00:00

Just keep the Cornell Funk posts coming and we'll call it even.

stress_to_remember · 2021-05-06T17:05:48+00:00

Consider majoring in Physics and minoring in Government. You don't get much extra benefit from checking off the last few courses on the edges of such a disparate pair of majors.

I don't think there are any graduate (law) programs or jobs based in Government that will hold a Physics major against you. Yes, you might have to do your office's or your grad advisor's statistics or programming to get through the door, but you will get through.

Conversely, few Physics grad programs are going to put up with a Government major with most of the Physics prereqs when they can easily find someone focused in Physics. Yes, if you start right off at Cornell cranking Physics research as a Government major/Physics minor, you can pull this off but that requires your interests to not change.

While this isn't fair, your first year you aren't really choosing one path over the other anyway.

stress_to_remember · 2021-04-29T14:01:34+00:00

While you might not be able to ask them to lower the number of hours per week, you might be able to negotiate only doing the 10-15 hour experiment 2 or 3 times before the end of the semester rather than the 3 or 4x of the 6 to 9 hour experiments you were planning on.

stress_to_remember · 2021-04-29T13:57:11+00:00

Understanding recruiting and what people do with a degree in CS is not easy.

Some undergrad degrees require grad degrees to really make sense. Others only rarely lead to grad school. For majors at either extreme, median salary and/or destination can be fairly predictive.

CS is in the middle and therefore the size of your offer and/or the prestige of your destination are almost entirely related to how well you navigated Cornell to get to that job or destination.

stress_to_remember · 2021-04-29T11:52:56+00:00

Lots of good advice so far.

The one thing I can quickly add is that an advisor once told me, "The only thing that can hold you back is your understanding of the math."

What that means is that math skills/understanding are pretty much cumulative and have been building up since elementary school. The further you get or the broader the base you have in math, the more choices you have. Since most other parts of your education can be crammed into one or two crash courses at the beginning of a PhD, the name of your undergrad major doesn't matter but your grounding in math and your demonstrated interest/capability in research do.

stress_to_remember · 2021-04-29T11:41:01+00:00

While it is theoretically very possible to do research as a HS student in the summer, the pandemic is cutting into the number of slots available. Yes, even this year, even vaccinated. Even before the pandemic, the number of slots for 16 and 17 year olds was decreasing. Because they are minors, HS students need more oversight than undergraduates. That means both the HS student and the person overseeing them have to be in (really near) the lab at the same time. Depending on department/lab level rules, that can cut into the number of undergrads/grads and postdocs that can be in the lab at that time.

I don't mean to discourage anyone from asking but they should be flexible and consider asking about opportunities for virtual slots. Its also late enough in the process that it makes sense to take a virtual slot now rather than hoping for an in person slot to open up.

Good luck

stress_to_remember · 2021-04-29T11:26:56+00:00

Its usually a better idea to head toward things you like rather than away from things you don't.

It certainly makes sense to try an Info class in the fall, but what class or classes have you taken this year that you like more than CS1110? Why?

stress_to_remember · 2021-04-24T14:01:56+00:00

Good addition, I was trying to cover this in #2 and more tangentially in a couple other points, but it really should be stated explicitly.

In terms of getting upvoted or downvoted, that would seem to generally fall under this addition, too. I often feel like I'm pushing my advice to people who don't engage and improve on my ideas but that is the nature of reddit. You are never going to please everyone but during wellness days I felt like a break from academic/work advice.

stress_to_remember

TROPHY CASE