I will definitely look into that themmases. Thank you. I guess I'm just kind of bothered by the fact that the sheer importance of a high GPA is so looked upon nowadays that really nothing else doesn't or couldn't seem to matter as much, or bare as much weight. I think sometimes people forget to realize that GPA is just a number. My friend once told me that GPA is more or less a measure of how one regurgitates information back out accurately. You could still theoretically have a high GPA but never really retain anything that you've learned. Likewise, it seems like parents, friends, professors or admissions boards never take into account the many different variables of how grades might be affected otherwise, and when trying to explain why to someone, you just come off as another student making excuses, trying to rationalize why you couldn't obtain better grades. There is an infinite number of reasons. Family deaths, relationship problems, financial distress, mental health problems, professor accents, professors' methodology, exam format, etc. We've all been there. Why do you think such a great importance is put on GPA the way it is?
For example, my Calc III class was downright horrible. The math department, the semester before I took the class, reassigned 3 of the best Calc III professors for whatever reason and replaced them with 2 new ones. One was a 23 year old with a phD from UChicago. and the other was a visiting Professor from Germany. I had the latter. I heard both were awful for their own particular reasons. With my case, my professor had fairly thick german accent, which was hard to understand. He held office hours once a week for one hour at a time when I had another class. Also, instead of using the 5 blackboard behind him to teach, and render examples for, he used Microsoft Powerpoint slides copied directly from the book. He said for us not to take any notes because the slides were in the book. And the only things we ever did right down were examples he put up in class. And Calc III is NOT an easy class for most people, especially with a professor like mine. He also made all of his exams multiple choice, which in math courses is about the worst thing they could do for their students because the exam does not warrant any partial credit. You could be doing a triple integral in spherical coordinates, make one mistake and you've got yourself 0 points for that problem. Horrible. My final exam was a 50Q M.C. nightmare. I had a hard time coping with Stokes' and Divergence Theorem, as well as Change of Variables. Needless to say I didn't do so well on my final. And that is why I ended up with the grade I did, and not solely because I didn't put the time and effort into it like many people would assume.
Sorry to have gone on the long rant there, I just wanted to give an example.
Also themmases, the last part about what you said. I would, but I doubt our school would have much of a record of any Chemistry/Biology/Anthropology students going off to any of the 30 or so F.S. schools like I've mentioned, but I guess it never hurts to check huh? It would just be a very small number of people I would assume, since their average class size is about 20-30/year.
I think it would be most beneficial for me to pursue a gap year. I could also use that time to make a few extra bucks on the side, to save up for those first year expenses too. Thanks again.