Is it normal for Sociology class to have 3/4's of the students getting D's and F's?

Do you know for a fact that everyone is getting Ds and Fs? You should check and see if you prof curves the grades at all. My understanding is that profs can't give almost everyone such poor grades, I think schools require that profs do at least a C average curve. Second, schools are technically a business and if everyone is failing, everyone would get kicked out and they don't want that either. I would talk to him to see how you can improve, and ask him how people do on avg. on these tests and whether he curves, and if everyone is still failing after the second test, maybe speak with your advisor or the dept. chair.

It's not uncommon for grades in the beginnng of the semester to be worse than they are at the end -- and it's the grades at the end of the semester that count. It's particularly true that classes taken by freshman have low grades at the beginning as the class may contain a lot of students not ready for college-level work and/or not used to being a little more independent in their learning. The students need to learn how to succeed in college classes and some students may need to discover that they are not prepared to succeed in college. Those intoductory courses taken by freshman are often the courses that "weed out" those who are not prepared to succeed in college.

If you are struggling, then talk with the professor and get yourself on track. Figure out where you are going wrong and focus on improving in that area. I doubt most people will receive D's and F's in the end. Just make sure you are not one who does.

I got a B in my class but I was working full time and taking a 16 week course in 3 weeks. Personally I think sociology is a cake walk, totally interesting so it is easy to study. It is possible that your teacher is extra hard, but it could be do to the 100 status, which usually are the classes everyone has to take so you do not always have stellar students in the class or students that are really not gun ho about the subject; like some one else said, lots of freshmen that are still learning how to do the college thing. I took Poly-Sci which is required in California. I got an A in the class and it was a very hard A to get; the professor was a lawyer and his test questions were hard to decipher let alone figure out the correct answer. The class did not require any upper division English or even college level English to get in; I was taking it the summer before my last semester before transferring to the University for nursing school so I had already taken my English courses. I remember I got a 99% on one of my papers and the class average was in the 60s...