Dorothy, we are not in high school anymore.
There are no overbearing parents or guidance counselors to hold your hand through classes or scold you when your first round of midterms go awry. You are among 29,000 other thriving, or not so thriving undergraduates and small classes are often hard to come by. That high school classroom of roughly 25 students will be rivaled by courses such as Zoology 101 that fill single lecture section with 400 students.
You are not alone. Students will do better than you, and worse than you. Some people will have older siblings to help them through the motions of college life and some students will not know a single person coming into Madison. By the end of it everyone will have written a paper or taken an exam, gotten too drunk at a party or not drunk enough.
It is important to keep in mind that it is hard to generalize about the entirety of University of Wisconsin academics because of the vast selection and diversity of classes that the university offers. This being said, there is one thing you can expect in the academic transition to postsecondary education — it is on you to take extra initiative.
In some classes the amount of academic independence you are given is unprecedented and it is up to the student to take advantage of resources offered. Your grades are now truly your own business, but this can be a double-edged sword. Take advantage of the tutoring services offered around campus and don’t be afraid to ask for individual help from teaching assistants.
When it comes to the class format, there are two basic class components — lecture and discussion. Some classes also consist of weekly laboratory time. Most often, professors will lead larger lectures and teaching assistants will lead discussion sections of around 20 students once a week. Total class time is significantly less than high school. I cannot stress how important it is to attend all aspects of a class. Less class time means each class is extremely important. Furthermore, lecture and discussion have different purposes and will often cover different material. They supplement each other. I have seen too many people suffer academically for the mere fact of not attending class — don’t let a simple thing such as attendance be the difference between success and failure.
The grading also looks a little bit different. The standard grading scale is comprised of six grades — A, AB, B, BC, D, F — and each class is weighted according to the class’s assigned credits. These small differences can make a big difference in GPA. The grading of the coursework itself can be different as well. Homework is assigned on a weekly basis and is weighted much less than in high school. Exams are heavily weighted and you can expect at least one midterm per class. It is important to realize that even though you are only required to attend class a few times a week, spending less total time in the classroom does not mean that you will be doing less work. All of these things point to the fact that taking an excessive amount of credits your first semester can be detrimental. Give yourself time to adjust to the differences that college academics bring.
The last thing you should learn before you enter the world of college academics is that you can only prepare so much. You have been preparing throughout high school for the challenges and opportunities that higher education will bring and you wouldn’t be in the position you are in — an incoming freshman at a top university — if you didn’t deserve it academically. Prepare but do not become anxious. You have already proven yourself, you just need to adjust to a new academic setting.
And don’t forget: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act states that once you turn 18, you are not legally required to disclose your grades to your parents, because finals can be really hard.
