Riten bro is right.but one thing from my personal experence. yes, you need to take stem major but youneed to brown nose your professor or dept head too. i've seen lots of dhotis and Nepalis do that, just go to their office show your face or try to express your need. i couldn't do that cuz of my stupid ego, but everyone who did always got scholorships , TA ship, RA ship easily and moved up. it's all about brownnosing and crying to them , feed their ego sometimes, they love helping poor like us sometimes. but you need to study hard too, but again, if you're not getting good gpa, don't linger around school , too much competition , look for other things to suceed. i've seen people from dhoti restaurants making gcs and opening their own restaurants in few years while students graduated with great gpa working for them. this is  America, it values exceptional talents , be it in studies , business or hard work. just don't focus on studies if you're not good at it, look other options too. cuz there is only so much effort you can put , other factors are luck and talents which are equally important if not more than your effort.  i had to study like 4 times more than other talented people and still it took me no where :( i'm stupid in studies, but if i had started business long time ago, i would have definately suceeded cuz of my hard work and business background. lastly don't forget about brownnosing, just cuz you're in America don't think it don't exist, it exists more than anywhere else, they call it "networking" in better terms but guess what, same freaking thing.