Since everyone has more or less had a couple of midterms (and gotten them back too) I feel like sharing some general opinions on them. Firstly midterm marks aren’t THE END of your course if they aren’t that great. Don’t let midterms put you down because from experience, the final exams and the labs/quizzes/whatever make a HUGE difference. You can actually go from a C to a B or a B to an A (or vice versa) because of things apart from the midterms. The reason for sharing all this is that I have seen a few hyper depressed first years cringing about the bad midterms. I won’t say that midterms don’t matter at all, they do matter as they give the first hint about how your grade is going to look like, but since one midterm is usually 1/4th of the total marks, a lot can change still.
I have also seen first years thinking of dropping some course just because they failed the midterm.
In this case my honest opinion is that if you KNOW something about that subject, and probably didn’t score well because it was way harder than expected or because of some stupid mistakes, DON’T drop it. Because you can surely make up for it in the coming tests.
If you have NO CLUE about what is happening in the course and think that you absolutely don’t have that much time to spend on one course (affecting the others as a consequence), you can consider dropping it. Check for the last dates to drop courses here.
I wouldn’t suggest dropping a course unless you really think that you cannot in any case score above a C, and also if you know that you can can make efforts the next semester to perform better. And it is also for people who are not willing to take risks with their GPA. One more important thing to remember is that taking a dropped course next semester can be hard to manage along with other regular courses, unless you are willing to push a winter course to spring/summer.
Just think wisely. Know what you can and what you cannot do.
Good luck
