Getting into the right classes can be quite a difficult task in college, especially in your first couple of years, when you do not have registration priority.  Since you do not get to register first, sometimes you will find yourself in a class with a difficult professor.

This is also the case when it comes to required classes, for a major or minor; but, you can find a way to survive, and succeed in the class.

So if you leave the first lecture in fear or disgust, know that there are ways to endure this tough situation

Use the TA

If you have a professor whom you find insufferable, consult the TA for further help.  If you have a discussion section, it can be a great way to get clarification on difficult or confusing material.

When I took Statistics in my freshman year, I could not stand my professor.  She moved through the material far too quickly, and her strong accent caused me even more confusion.

Fortunately, my TA was fantastic, pretty much saving my grade in the class.  His discussion section made the material understandable, and his one section more valuable for me than the professor’s three lectures.

Go to the office

In a big lecture hall, professors can seem larger than life.  But remember that they are people too, not figures to be afraid of.

All professors have office hours, and most will make appointments to accommodate your schedule.  Talk to them, because they want to help you.  Even if their lectures are excruciating, they are likely approachable one-on-one, and it is worth a visit if you need help.

I took my first upper division class in my sophomore year, and my teacher was extremely difficult.  Her lectures contained more information than I could process, and her homework assignments were very difficult.

But when I finally got up the courage to visit her office, she helped me with the subject matter, and remained patient with me.  So don’t be afraid or intimidated, because they want to help you.

And if/when you do visit office hours, make sure you are polite, no matter how insufferable their lectures may be.

If anyone else has advice on dealing with difficult professors, please post below.

As Elizabeth mentioned, February is a month filled with opportunities for budding relationships (college acceptance letters) and heartbreak. (sigh…rejection letters).

In some cases, these same letters may force some soon-to-be graduating high schools seniors to revisit a question they once confidently answered months before penning rough draft personal statements. What’s more, the answer to this question may not arrive after one discussion.

The question is simple: “What’s the value of a college degree?” Using qualitative and quantitative analysis, Wall Street Journal columnist Sue Shellenbarger attempted to answer that question. Below you will find excerpts from her December 2009 article as well as some great BetterGrads-inspired commentary.

Finding work you love. College degrees can guide students’ career choices in subtler ways. Jason Wotman, 24, loves his work as a co-founder of Tailwaiters, a Great Neck, N.Y., startup that runs tailgate parties for clients at sporting events and concerts. “It’s mine, it’s my baby. Every step, every ounce of progress, feels good,” he says.

His degree in human and organizational development from Vanderbilt University helped launch him as an entrepreneur, he says. His courses in marketing, human-resource management and leadership equipped him well to size up opportunities and run a startup. “Taking it from an idea to an actual business, I felt like I had the tools,” he says.

BG comments: Jason’s story illustrates how college is an incubator for great ideas. On a similar note, coursework, research grants, and volunteer opportunities prepared our own Kevin Adler to run Bettergrads.

Preparing for a rich, well-rounded life: To Megan DeLamar Schroeder, Texarkana, Texas, planning the college experience based entirely on future income demeans its true value. “The intangible benefits … cannot be reduced to some kind of short-term cost benefit-analysis, as though one is purchasing a piece of property or an expensive sports car,” she says.

She borrowed $40,000 to earn an economics degree from Stanford University in the 1980s, which landed her only an entry-level job at a bank upon graduation. She spent 10 years paying off her student loans. But the experience was worth every penny, she says. The opportunity “to ‘marinate’ for four years in an amazing environment” served as a “springboard to lifelong learning and inquisitiveness,” she says. She will encourage her 10-year-old twin daughters to hew to similar values when they start their college search, she says.

BG comments: What’s the value of “experience” and “intangible benefits?” As Chris Anderson, author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price notes, “Tuition buys direct proximity to ask questions, share ideas, and solicit feedback from academics like [UC Berkeley Physics Professor Richard] Muller. It’s access to the network of other students and the idea exchange, help, and relationships this provides.” That sounds like value to me.

Click here to read the full article and feel free to share your thoughts below.

Once upon time, Pell Grants, federal loans from the government, were a great asset to help students pay for their college education. However, Kevin Carey, a policy director at Education Sector, a D.C.-based think tank argues that this is no longer the case. In a recent article, he claims Pell Grants are not as beneficial today, given the rising costs of tuition and the lack of any objective, universal statistics to evaluate how well colleges educate students.

He explains that experts in the Education world approve of President Obama’s proposal to transfer more than $40 billion in banking industry subsidies to Pell Grants, as this would provide more opportunities for low-income students to obtain the necessary aid making the epic quest of attending college a little more realistic. However, adding more money to the Pell Grant budget does not resolve the issue of tuition hikes. And that’s a minor issue when compared to this observation by Carey:

“The biggest culprit is the lack of objective, publicly available information about how well colleges teach and how much college students learn. Nobody knows which colleges really do the best job of taking the students they enroll and helping them learn over the course of four years.”

Taking Carey’s comments into consideration, what’s at stake for colleges if they were to participate in a national exam evaluating their ability to educate students? Brand Equity. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say College A is a famous, large research university, who has received many accolades. College A, along with many other similar schools, decides to participate in a national assessment measuring its ability to educate students across majors. One year later, College A receives their exam results and the administration learns that College A can do a much better job of educating its students. With its reputation tarnished, College A sees lower enrollment numbers, and as a result lower revenue. While this example is a bit extreme, it shows why colleges would be apprehensive to subjecting themselves to said testing.

On the other hand, one might question the effectiveness of such testing. Obviously, there are different types of learning that extend beyond the classroom. For example, how could such an exam go about evaluating what a student has learned via an internship or research opportunity?

So, should colleges be evaluated on their ability to educate students? Feel free to share your two cents in the comment section below.

Recent features from The New York Times and US News & World Report college blogs reminded me of my own experience with the early decision option. Early decision typically means that the student submits the application in early to mid-autumn and hears back around early December. If admitted, the decision is binding.

By the time I applied to college, I had visited about a dozen campuses and seriously researched around thirty schools. I was heavily immersed in the admissions process and preparing to apply to several universities of varying degrees of competitiveness.

Shortly before beginning my senior year, my parents and I visited Barnard College and Vassar College. I loved both and knew that I would definitely apply to them as “reach” schools. Upon starting the school year, however, I learned that my classmates were submitting early decision applications in record numbers. Some sort of group panic seemed to set in and I felt a huge amount of pressure to pick somewhere for an early decision application.

I decided to apply early to Vassar because I’d loved it so much on my visit and, being a highly competitive school, conventional wisdom said that applying early would increase my chances of being admitted. I threw myself into my early application, interviewed with a local alumna, and worked half-heartedly on other applications while I sat on pins and needles waiting for the response.

Looking back, there were definite clues that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with my decision. A belated realization that Poughkeepsie is not particularly close to New York City changed my perception of life at Vassar and I freaked out when I paid closer attention to the math and science general education requirements.

Nevertheless, when the dreaded thin envelope arrived in the first week of December, I was crushed. I cried, I lamented the loss of my “dream” school, and then….well, then I got over it. After about two days of obsessing over what could have been, I found myself feeling strangely liberated. I could go back to finishing numerous applications instead of committing myself to one school without knowing if they wanted to commit to me—these applications felt exciting again instead of overwhelming (most of the time).

This is not to say that Vassar isn’t an excellent college or that it is not the right choice for many people. But I pushed myself into the early decision option when it really was not the most logical path for me. The moments of doubt I felt while waiting for the decision were very telling, as was the relief that developed after my initial frustrating at being rejected. Perhaps they saw something in my application that I could not see myself: hesitation, uncertainty, a lack of a clear understanding of how I would fit into the campus. Whatever the reason may be, I can honestly say now that I am grateful for that early rejection. Not only did it prepare me for a handful more, it made me value the colleges that did accept me ever more—and when I painstakingly decided between my two final choices, I knew that I was making a fully informed and thoughtful decision.

On my first day at Occidental College, I met a student who was transferring from Vassar. The irony was not lost on me. The college admissions process is very much about personal choices and, in my experience, nobody has to make that choice early if he/she is not ready to do so.

Jacob, I totally agree with you on the “failure” front. Having just graduated in May (and in school all over again in a school), I think a lot about the choices I made and did not make during my undergraduate years. There are certainly things that I would have done differently and maybe even wish had never happened–but the cliche rings true that I would not be the person I am today if it weren’t for those mistakes or missteps. The only reason I feel capable of being a grad student now, for instance, is because I just spent four years figuring out how I learn best. I used to be obsessed with flash cards; call it a stubborn high school holdover, but I insisted on making flash cards for just about everything throughout my freshman year of college even when they really weren’t the best study tool. Eventually this dawned on me (probably in the form of red marks all over a blue book exam) and I realized that I had to explore other study techniques to find what worked best for me.

I also regret how much I pushed myself into a certain double major “box” from the get-go and then had to pull myself out when I realized that what I thought I wanted to do as a high school senior might not be true forever. I started out planning a Diplomacy & World Affairs/Theater major, but my last-minute decision to drop a theater class and try out Race & American Politics was possibly the most liberating moment of my undergraduate career. The realization that I was in charge of my academic path was extremely powerful and I’m so grateful that it happened because I ended up very happy with my Politics major/Spanish minor. Sometimes I look back on how frenzied I was as a freshman, trying to map out a rigid 4-year plan, and wonder whatever made me place all that pressure on myself in the first place!

Along similar lines, I experimented with so many extracurricular opportunities. Although some of them were definitely not good fits from the start (i.e. wish I’d known that Assistant Business Manager for the college newspaper meant folding and stamping copies for 200+ off-campus subscribers. Every. Single. Week.) I am glad that I allowed myself the flexibility to explore a variety of options. Otherwise, I never would have found the ones (writing for aforementioned newspaper, writing advising, Orientation team, etc) that felt truly fulfilling.

It’s easy to look at mistakes we’ve made and call them “regrets” and “failures.” But those words have such negative connotations, I think that we are better served to view these instances as learning experiences instead. Easier said than done, I know–but so worth it when we come out on the other side more prepared for the next challenge.