I’m not saying that it’s impossible to get straight A’s in college. What I’m trying to say is that maintaining a 4.0 GPA is way harder than it was in high school.

Thinking back, I realize just how easy it was to be a straight A student in high school. I kept that up for three out of my four years there. All it really took was studying for the exams, since that’s what most teachers relied on for grading. Another thing is that in high school, how you behaved went towards your grade as well. High school was pretty rowdy, and I was always one of the quieter, shyer kids, so that definitely counted. It doesn’t seem fair that your behavior determines how good of a grade you get, but that’s really how it was at my school.

Competition is also a really big factor. There wasn’t too much of it in my school, unless you were in an AP or Honors class. Still, the expectations were nowhere as high as the expectations at college.

That being said, I find it really hard to maintain a 4.0 in college. High school is a place of students with varying levels in intelligence. Some are super smart and others… not so much. In order to get into any given college, you have to have a certain GPA or you can’t get in. That basically means that everyone in college is pretty darn smart. This bumps up the competition, therefore making it more difficult to get A’s in every class.

In college, how you behave doesn’t really determine what grade you get. In most classes, the professors don’t really know your name, so your grade relies solely on exams and papers. You really have to prove that you deserve an A.

I now find myself busting my butt to get that GPA up. It’s really not easy, especially since most of my professors aren’t easy graders. I guess that’s a good thing, but I can definitely say that the level of stress is twice as high as it was a year ago.