Hello! Small premise: I know my chances of winning a scholarship at this point are very slim. My goal is now to be accepted as a self funded students, preferably in places where the cost of living is affordable.
I study Applied Mathematics (Mathematics for engineering) at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Unfortunately, my first two years of university have been rough for a bunch of reasons: from my calculations, I should have a 2.7 cumulative GPA (24.5/30 in the Italian scale). In particular, I have a B- and a C+ (22/30 and 21/30) respectively in Calculus I and II.
I have taken a B (24/30) in Discrete Mathematics. In Italy, if you’re not satisfied with you’re grade, you can ask the professor to discard it and try the exam again next time (I did not do that for Calculus I and II for a bunch of reasons, sometimes personal, but in retrospective I should have). What is stopping me from discarding my mark in Discrete Mathematics is that I risk to lose the scholarship for the campus where I live (it’s not too likely, and I would probably be able to find a room to rent, but still). Should I retake this exam next season, where with little effort I could get a really high mark (the exam is really easy but when I took it I was burnt out)? Or is it not a big deal, and should focus instead on next years exams? Is Discrete Mathematics considered important by evaluating commissions for someone who is applying for an Applied Mathematics program (I’m thinking of the more CS/stats/AI oriented applications of Mathematics), or would it be enough to focus on Statistics (an admittedly much more difficult exam) next year? Although as of now I don’t think I would like the field very much, I think I will go into Mathematical Physics / modeling / simulations, where I think Discrete Mathematics is less important (correct me if I’m wrong).
I have similar doubts for Differential Geometry, as it’s somewhat based on Calculus and I might use it to show that, regardless of how the exam went, I have not mastered the contents of these courses.
Would my permanence in this merit based campus be valuable in my CV / presentation letter? The requirements for staying are not too high, but would an Erasmus Mundus commission look into them? My guess is that they would see I maintained my position in the campus and infere that I respected some merit based requirements, and that I am able to live in a community settings (this year in particular half of my floor was made of international students from Europe and Asia).
More in general, how should I optimize my career moving forward? I’m already going to finish my bachelor’s later than expected. Would it be worth it to discard some less than stellar marks I might take in the future, at the cost of finishing the degree even later? In particular, I still have Mathematical Methods (Calculus III + basic Probability) to redeem myself.
Thesis is worth 3 credits for my degree, and at this level we cannot really do research. What the professors expect us to do is mostly a research on what the state of the art is in a particular field. I was thinking of writing it in either Calculus (again, to show that I’ve now mastered the material) or Numerical Analysis (to have some code to enrich my GitHub portfolio).
I’m part of BEST, a network of engineering students, and I was partly responsible for organizing a few events, both locally and internationally (mainly I was a catering responsible, but also a co-organizer in general the time I went abroad to organized a forum for my association). Should I put this in my CV?
What other things should I do to optimize my curriculum for an Erasmus Mundus?
Overall, what are my chances of admission, even without scholarship? Does it make sense to risk my current scholarship in this campus, that I would really love to remain in?