an insistant inquiry

Hi aska,

I thoroughly messed up my first year with a GPA of 2.0 (if Rosi decides to round off my average to its next integer that is, my percentage average is a 62.7) some serious labouring is in order and I’m willing to work my rear off to get myself out of this Black hole I’ve managed to put myself in, thanks to chronic procrastination. I’m pursuing the philosophy specialist and eventually hope to get into law school (of course that dream took a bullet after seeing my results). I guess I would be able to salvage my final GPA if I get straight 4.0’s in the next three years.

However, I’ve heard that Philosophy is hard to score in, and also one of my friends who is in her 4th year told me about how she had dropped her own Philosophy course after it was dragging her GPA down. I took Phl100 and thought it was not so bad in terms of the level of difficulty, even with my chronic procrastination. In terms of the essays in that course, I would end up doing it the night before, usually with help from the lecture notes since I hadn’t read the text itself, and would usually end up with a B- to a C-.

So, considering I’m pursuing a Philosophy specialist, realistically, how much can I score? Has anyone at UofT actually graduated with a 4.0 in a Philosophy specialist?Should I start considering alternative career paths? I haven’t just killed off chances at a good final GPA and law school with my damned 2.0, have I?!

THANK YOU!

Sincerely,
-Guilt-ridden and Hopeless, now wishing she’d attended all those lectures.

AND

Hi aska!

I’d actually sent out a similar question earlier, but I’m not sure if it got lost in your inbox which I’m sure is full of other questions from similarly desperate students…

anyway, how good of an idea do you think it is to pursue the philosophy specialist if I’m aiming for a really good GPA at the end of university? I’ve heard that Phl usually drags your gpa down. Do you know how other students who have taken the Phil specialist have fared in general? Is a 4.0 cgpa in phl possible at UofT? I tried googling this as much as possible, but to no avail, so I came here in hopes that you would have the answer! 🙂

Thanks!

🙂

———————————————

Impatient Inquirer,

Yes, I got your other email. Your two emails were a grand one day apart. Sometimes most of the time aska gets an influx of emails and takes a day or more to answer. It’s almost like aska takes time to eat and sleep and stuff! 😉

So:

• How well you do in philosophy comes with a number of factors: how much you actually work, attending lectures, doing readings, actually caring. That’s all on you, but you seem to have some sort of aptitude for it so give it a try if you’d like.
• A full on 4.0 in any humanities program is difficult since they’re largely essay-based, meaning your prof or TA will require a loooot of wowing for you to score that high.
• Has anyone ever gotten a full on 4.0? Not sure. Probably.
• You haven’t killed your law school dream. For the most part, almost all post-grad programs really just look at your last two years of university, although they do consider your CGPA as a whole. Likewise law school apps come with a lot of other components like your LSAT scores, recommendation letters, yada yada yada.

xoxo,

aska