<p>I have about 6 W's , but almost all have been retaken and awarded an A. For an entire semester I had to withdraw entirely due to my grandfather having a brain tumor, which required several operations, speech therapy, etc and as a result I had ( had/wanted is more accurate) to help family members with him and also I wanted to spend more time with him since it was unclear if he would even survive for longer than a few months. The other withdraw was due to the fact I could not understand the professor ( heavy central African accent ).</p>
<p>My GPA is a 3.8, but I'm worried about these W's and was not sure if retaking with an A and having extenuating circumstances will cause them to be overlooked by graduate schools. I would assume if you make an A in a class you retook the adComs would ignore the W altogether, but I am not sure if this is a correct assumption.</p>
<p>I haven't been able to find information to answer this is on the internet. Nothing really addresses the possibility of someone retaking a class they received a W in and having it and the effect it could have on admissions.</p>
<p>Yes, the Ws will be overlooked in this case. Your transcript will show that all the Ws were in the same semester, so it won’t look at all like you’re dropping classes in which you don’t think you’ll earn a good grade.</p>
<p>If you wish, you can mention in your statement of purpose that you left school during the semester of 200x because of an illness in the family, BUT upon your return, you took interesting class xyz, which sparked your interest in field abc. (Just weave it into a sentence with a positive spin.)</p>
<p>Alternatively, your recommenders can mention your semester withdrawal in passing. This is usually the better option, so you don’t waste space in your statement of purpose dealing with what is essentially a non-issue.</p>
<p>I think the overall issue of W’s has actually been addressed a few times before on here, although of course no two students/situations are exactly identical.</p>
<p>In general, a few scattered W’s (I’d say less than or equal to 3 or 4) during the course of a college career won’t matter for grad admissions, and don’t need to be explained or addressed at all.</p>
<p>But here my impression, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that you withdrew entirely for one semester (hence resulting in 5 W’s) and then later retook these courses and got A’s. Additionally, in some other semester you dropped one course and thus got another W.</p>
<p>I think first of all that you don’t need to think about that other, standalone W at all, assuming you did fine in your other courses that term.</p>
<p>As for the semester where you withdrew entirely, I think it might be worth addressing it so the grad programs know why you left for a semester. And I think that should be good enough. It sounds like you have a very strong record overall, and you have extremely valid extenuating circumstances to explain why you withdrew for that semester. Given all that, I do not believe any reasonable graduate program - even the competitive ones - would hold this against you.</p>
<p>EDIT: I agree with Professor X that the best course of action would actually be to have your recommenders mention your semester withdrawal in passing.</p>
<p>Thank you guys for your responses. This was exactly the information I was looking for and I’m relieved to hear that it will not effect my chances.</p>