Is dropping a class a good strategy?
“Life’s a journey, not a destination,” says Dr. Michael Smutko, who teaches the popular science course Modern Cosmology. Smutko has seen a steady 10 percent drop rate in the class over the past five years. He is concerned that students sometimes have the wrong attitude about college, causing them to drop out of classes at the first hint of difficulty. “Being at a school like NU is a privilege that should be savored as much as possible,” he says. “It’s not about extra credit and strategizing the path of least resistance to graduation.”
But every quarter, students are still abuzz with the best stress strategy of all: dropping a class entirely. The number of drops processed on CAESAR between the add and drop deadline gives an estimate of how many students drop classes every quarter. In Fall Quarter of 2007, there were 228 instances of dropped classes, 59 percent of which were processed in the week before the last day to drop a class. The numbers increased to 319 last winter, 78 percent of which were processed in the last week, and decreased to 184 last spring, with 57 percent occurring in the last week. Evidently, students like to wait until the last moment to drop if they do decide to do so.
Weinberg sophomore Jason Catanese dropped Introduction to the Solar System on the drop deadline of Fall Quarter his freshman year, citing dissatisfaction with his grade as the major reason. “I was passing the class, but if I would’ve stayed with it, there was a chance I wouldn’t have passed, and it would’ve brought my GPA down,” Catanese said.
“Since then, I’ve grown and adapted to what college is like — I’ve learned that even if you think you are doing poorly in a class, if you go in and talk to your professor, and go to office hours, you can really improve your grade,” Catanese said. “I don’t see myself dropping any classes for the rest of my time here.”
If there’s no chance you can pass a class, dropping might be your best option, but first, “go in and talk to your professor,” Catanese recommended. Most professors are willing to help instead of telling you to drop the class.
Smutko said he feels no “schadenfreude” from the fact that people drop Cosmology. “I’ve just accepted that 1 out of 10 people will drop,” Smutko said.
But the reasons students have for dropping a class are sometimes questionable. “Students have all kinds of reasons for dropping classes, some of them good and some of them less so,” Philosophy Assistant Professor Kyla Ebels-Duggan said.
Ebels-Duggan taught a 200-level course called Classics of Ethical Theory last Spring, and saw the enrollment drop from 110 students to 100 students over the course of the quarter.
Students often seem to have an expectation that distribution classes should be graded easily and require little work, Ebels-Duggan said. “Some students have a legitimate interest in finding classes that will meet their distro requirements without demanding too much work, but I don’t pitch this class at those students,” Ebels-Duggan said. “I tell people up front that the class is demanding, not to scare them off, but to give them the information that they need to make a reasonable decision about whether the class is what they are looking for.”
Smutko has similar concerns. One of the most common reasons for dropping, he thinks, was the class being more difficult than anticipated — a pattern that worries him. “In the five years that I’ve been at NU,” he said, “I’ve found it troubling that more and more students are signing up for classes based largely on how easy they think that the classes will be. The only thing that seems to be important is a 4.0 at the end of four years so that they can get into the right med school, law school, or business school. Whether or not they learned anything along the way seems to be irrelevant.”
Perhaps Smutko is right — maybe the quarterly dropping frenzy is an indication of a larger problem. Are we really so focused on a string of letters on our transcripts that we are willing to just throw four weeks’ worth of work out the window? It can often seem like Northwestern, with its bounty of career-hungry Medill journalists and McCormick engineers, plus a slew of Weinberg students stuck in the rut of the pre-med route, is too pre-professional. People sometimes forget that we’re here to learn.
Dropping classes should be a last resort, not a quick fix to prevent a blemish on your transcript. The pass/no credit option is also available for most classes. Taking a class P/N can be very rewarding, relieving the stress of making the grade without sacrificing the learning experience. Jaci Rivera, the assistant registrar, hypothesized that “the significantly lower number of drops in the fall could indicate that the extra three months of registration over the summer allows students more opportunity to arrange their schedules, making dropping less necessary.”
So perhaps this quarter, put more thought into registration, and don’t expect all your distros to be easy next quarter. After all, “college is supposed to be about trying new things,” as Smutko said. “This includes failing sometimes, but becoming wiser—not just smarter—in the process.”
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Read about this guy who dropped a bunch of classes. Or you can return home.
Until popular professional schools stop throwing out all applications below a 3.5 GPA, this will always happen.
Christopher Columbus
October 27, 2008 at 6:23 am
actually im just here to get a degree. i don’t actually care about the learning part.
syd
October 31, 2008 at 7:25 pm
this is so wrong it might as well be a denial.
Largesse
December 19, 2008 at 8:48 pm
“People sometimes forget that we’re here to learn.”
Uh, yeah, but at the end of the day, how much we “learn” really isn’t going to matter if our grades suck and prevent us from getting into the grad school or profession of our choice.
In light of the fact that we’re already paying an obscene amount of money to go to this school, I think dropping a class is a pretty small price to pay — and a smart decision, to boot — if the only thing we’re sacrificing is some sort of “learning” experience along the way.
I’m not trying to belittle the value of learning; the concerns raised by you and by the aforementioned professors are completely legitimate. But here’s the bottom line:
LANDING SPOTS IN GRAD SCHOOLS AND ULTIMATELY, IN THE WORK FORCE, IS SO MUCH MORE COMPETITIVE THAN IT USED TO BE. MORE THAN 65,000 PEOPLE LOST THEIR JOBS THIS MONDAY. Let me repeat: 65,000+ jobs gone in one day. I bet some of those people have college degrees, too.
I’m sorry, but we do what we have to do to survive. And if I have to choose between supporting myself someday and dropping a potentially worthwhile class, the choice is pretty simple.
Kate
January 29, 2009 at 8:06 pm
I think the idea the people are dropping classes less in fall because of having three months to register is mostly nonsense. I think people come back in fall recharged after summer. By winter/spring, some people are burnt out.
?
January 29, 2009 at 11:46 pm
I don’t think there is anything wrong with dropping classes. In the “real world” you are working for one employer and that employer has a very good idea of how much work you can accomplish in a week, month, year, in your job position. In college this is not the case. Professors have a good idea of what one student can handle in their own class, but when you combine all of one students coursework as a whole it can be overbearing and sometimes counterproductive to stick with a chosen class load. In fact you can even go as far as saying that this is teaching students a very important life lesson in prioritizing and knowing their own limitations.
Symptoms Of Panic Attacks
February 11, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Dropping a class (and then retaking it another semester), in my opinion, does not mean one hasn’t learned. In fact, if one retakes it, one can learn from the mistakes they made the last time.
Let’s face facts, folks: A bad grade ain’t going to look good on a transcript. If you retake it and get an A, that’s the smart thing to do; it proves you can actually do well in the class.
Ultimately, it matters a great deal more than some professors think that people get good grades on their transcripts.
Does Smutko remember how he got into grad school?
Katharine
March 16, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Do you even go here? We’re on the quarter system.
@Katharine
March 18, 2010 at 8:14 pm
No, but she just wishes we could all get along like we used to in middle school.
Tyelna
March 18, 2010 at 11:17 pm
hahahahahaha
@Tylena
March 19, 2010 at 12:55 am
Look, just pass the classes and shut up. I am getting my Ph.D in Business Development after my term.
Obama
April 11, 2010 at 3:43 pm
watch me on discuss this at this link http://www.youtube.com/user/way180#p/f/2/EwA2_e0FXxM
Dr. Marc Lamont Hill
April 11, 2010 at 3:46 pm