I just got my midterm grade today and its not so hot. I've heard of other people successfully dropping a class after the drop date when their grades come back after that date, and that is exactly what I need to do. I'm junior standing in ECE and CPE, who would I need to talk to?

3/16/2006 6:25:17 PM

dropping is your only chance - try through professor first

3/16/2006 6:35:30 PM

^^ you would need Jerome Lavelle to sign off on a Schedule Revision Form.

3/16/2006 7:06:54 PM

^ She's right. There is a form they have in 118 Page. The form asks for professor input and information from the student but then Dr. Lavelle has to review it. Not easy to do just for doing poorly on a test or in a class alone. Late drops are only approved for serious reasons. The question is: are there any extenuating circumstances that led to poor performance in that class- and if there are things affecting that class, what about your other courses? Just trying to give you an idea of what is reviewed in a late grade change request.

3/16/2006 8:09:12 PM

I just went through late-auditing a class last semester.

You need to talk to Ms. Townsend before you even think about approaching Dr. Lavelle. There's some paperwork you have to go through, but seeing Dr. Lavelle is actually the last stage of getting a class audited.

3/16/2006 8:17:05 PM

I had my first test in a class yesterday which was the first graded assignment of the semester... I really have no idea how it will turn out since its largely essay and subjective type grading things. Since that is like half my grade for the class I can sympathize with your situation, even if I don't have any advice to offer.

Subjective grading combined with no way to turn to credit only until after having a graded assignment can be a bad combination. I had a professor once who got mad that I finished the test quickly. He wrote all over my test about things that I should have mentioned but didn't and failed me for the test which was like a third of my grade for that class. I read through it right then and found multiple nearly word for word quotes of what he was looking for. I forced him to change my grade since I had actually had written more & better than what other students had, and had exactly the points he said that I should have in there.

Good luck getting things taken care of!

3/16/2006 8:48:49 PM

Think about whether you will fail the class or not because of this miderm. If you have done well on all other assignments, one bad non-failing grade out of 120-something credit hours will lower your GPA by 0.03 ... maybe.

[Edited on March 17, 2006 at 5:33 AM. Reason : .]

3/17/2006 5:33:41 AM

That test that I mentioned that i had no idea how it would go went badly.
I had some concerns about the professor already, as mentioned in the linked thread (my most recent post in that thread is about the test), but without a graded assignment yet, it wasn't enough to make me want to drop it. But dropping it isn't a serious option because I'm graduating this semester. Although if the rest of the tests go like that one, maybe I wont be?

http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=386590

3/17/2006 1:22:40 PM

why is it that we can't change to audit or something ourselves?

I have a class I'm not doing so well in, but my grade before the drop date was fine and now life's gotten to where worrying about that class is pretty far down on the list.

Seriously, we're paying for it either way and in the long run I can't imagine people getting into the habit of signing up for too many courses then playing with them after the drop date--that's both time and money we're losing, which, for me anyway, hurts a lot more than a bad grade--but why make me suffer the bad grade on top of losing time and money?

3/19/2006 10:57:28 AM

^
Think of it from the opposite point of view. The university needs to spend time, money and resources trying to plan out an appropriate number of sections for each course, times/rooms to schedule them in, faculy to teach, etc. etc. Take a small percentage of people, say 10%, dropped or changed to audit the day before the final exam, you'd have wasted a LOT of resources that semester, including that student's time.

By making the drop date earlier, it helps people to evaluate early on whether they should stick with the course or not. Of course, that's also why there are advisors ... to help you evaluate even before the semester begins whether your life will be difficult or not.

3/19/2006 11:16:26 AM

^ thanks for bringing up those points.

additionally, the state of North Carolina (barring you are not an out of state student) pays way more for your education than you do. if we allowed students to play with their schedule until the last day of the semester then the state would be paying for students to just have fun.

another point that should be noted is that NC State actually has a pretty liberal drop policy. a lot of colleges/universities have a 2 week drop period and after that require signatures (ours is almost a month). other schools only allow students to drop a certain amount of classes after 10 days into the semester. i know the first university in NC that i went to only allowed 4 drops past the 10 day mark throughout your whole college experience.

3/19/2006 5:32:27 PM

And, you can thank your Student Senate ancestors for having the drop date at the 6th week of class. Because many students were not getting early evaluative feedback by the fourth, they could not make good decisions on whether or not to keep a class. Student senate lobbied for a change to the sixth week and it has really helped many students make informed decisions.

3/20/2006 5:55:34 AM