Dilemma with college course grades and penn transcript

Applying to College
1

<p>Hey all,
I attended the University of Pennsylvania's Pre-College program for high school seniors this summer.
I am applying to Penn ED, so obviously I am hoping it will help a little.
The problem is this:
I took two undergraduate classes there:
Law & Society, in which I earned an A-. No problem there. I'm also hopefully getting my professor to put in some good words for me.
However, my second course was Introduction to Macroeconomics, which I struggled with due to the poor quality of the instructor and the fact that I shouldn't have skipped microeconomics in order to get into the class. I ended up with a C+ in that course.</p>

<p>Penn's application asks you to list all of the schools and colleges that you've attended, and also asks you to send an official transcript.</p>

<p>My question is whether or not I should send penn the transcript, or perhaps they already have it since it's from their own university.</p>

<p>How damaging is that macroecon grade?</p>

2

<p>You need to make them aware of the courses, even if they know about your enrollement. That way, you're above board.</p>

3

<p>But what about my scores? Wouldn't it be better to just not report it considering that it's a bad grade at their own university?</p>

4

<p>Come on guys, no one has any opinion at all?</p>

5

<p>Hey all, I'm bumping this because I haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet and deadlines are nearing.
Please give some advice.</p>

6

<p>They know about it already. And you want to use the law class to help your application. The benefit from taking these classes from Penn likely outweighs the poor grade you got in econ. Maybe you could write about what you learned from this experience (skipping prerequisites, not the bad professor).</p>

7

<p>Thanks rlm for the reply. But I'm applying to wharton, so I would assume the macroecon class is more important. But conversely, I did fine on the macro ap exam.
Am I overanalyzing this? I mean, does the A- at least make it neutral and that's that?</p>

8

<p>You have to list the two courses no matter what. If you don't, you will be in a far worse situation because they will know you wanted to hide the bad grade.</p>

9

<p>You need not send a transcript, because they would be sending a transcript to themselves, which makes no sense. The reason for a transcript is to confirm the grades received, which they can do on their own if classes were taken there.</p>

<p>My daughter took two courses at Brown one summer and didn't send it a transcript when she applied. The courses were in their records when she matriculated.</p>

<p>If you don't report the courses you are not honestly answering the questions asked. If they find out (which is entirely possible), that would be it for your application. Showing the interest in the school and getting a recommendation from one professor outweighs the disadvantage of the C+, particularly since you did fine on the AP exam. It also shows that you did something constructive that summer. Leaving a summer blank is not optimal either.</p>