The high school to college transition is hard for many people as a result of being away from family, self-motivation, and adjusting GPA expectations. GPA along with a student's ACT score often define people coming out of high school both to college admission panels and to their fellow classmates. Most people strive to get that A in every class, but this is an unrealistic expectation for college. That "A" in high school, unfortunately, does not necessarily transfer to an A in college. There are three main reasons why. An A in college goes to the exceptional of the exceptional, the material of the classes in college is almost always harder, and the class load in college is much more strenuous than in high school.
An "A" in college goes to only the exceptional of the exceptional. This means that if you are in a Calculus II class in college with people who all earned As in high school, not everyone will get an A in college. In high school, maybe half the people got a B or above, and this carries on to college. Only the elite of the elite are able to get an A in college because they are the top of the top from high school. It is a great ideal to strive to be one of those students, but I have realized that, unlike in high school, I can not be that for every class in college. At first, this brought down my morale, but there are other smart people out there that are smarter than me, and that is okay. Hard work, just like in high school, can help bridge the gap.
In addition, the material itself is harder. This is a new experience for many students, including myself. There were some courses in high school that I excelled in and was able to go without studying for, but that is not a reality in college. Even though math and science is my thing, I have to study for each and every class now. I adjusted to the level of material fairly fast, but if a student is not able to do this, the time commitment is a tough adjustment for those who have never struggled before.
The class load is the final thing that should make people adjust their GPA expectation in college. In high school, people are considered go-getters if they take two college classes in a semester which maybe amounts to 6 hours max. However, a low class load in college is 12 hours. The "two hours of studying for every hour in class" rule does apply for some classes in college, so a class load of 15 plus hours equals a full time job. The overall time commitment means that there is almost always a finite amount of time that you can dedicate to each class. In high school when I was taking a hard class, I could dedicate extra time to it to make sure I could get an A. In college, "easy classes" still take a time commitment, so it is harder to dedicate lots of extra time to tough classes.
The idea of lowering GPA expectation is not giving up, but in order to prevent depression, resulting from a student's first "B," some realities must be faced.
