A lot of us have higher GPA variances than others.
This is very interesting. Aside from specific class/professor problems, I wonder if another cause of this is the challenge of multi-tasking a variance of courses.
It might help if each semester could be structured so that it contained related or complementary courses. Or better yet, have the option of taking double credit-courses. So, a full course load of 2 or 3 intensive courses would be the same amount of hours as 5 or 6 regular courses.
I had this happen unintentionally in my sophomore year (computer engineering).
In 3 different classes (MechE, DiffEQ, and circuits) we happened to be going over very similar material from different angles (under/over/critically-damped systems).
I learned those concepts pretty well, with less effort than other quarters.
Smith College is considering trying to make itself more attractive to smart students on the autism spectrum. I would be grateful for suggestions on how to do this from autistics who read LessWrong. You can write comments here or if you wish to remain anonymous send them to me at Jdmiller@Smith.edu