This is my first year at my high school and I am a senior and I have done something very stupid. I am dual-enrolled in a precalculus course and I have had a TOUGH professor who has not explained the course well. I have tried to improve but I have had a solid D all year. I am not happy with this grade and I plan to retake the course, but I had no idea it was going to be in the way of graduating! I had no idea that my school’s grading system considers a D to be failing, even if the professor considers it a pass. Apparently it is in the fine print of some dual enrollment handbook that no one reads. I have no clue how to even tell my parents this. What if I don’t graduate? Will my admission be rescinded???
Go talk to your guidance counselor. Find out if you can take the course in the summer. Is it that you don’t have enough credits to graduate without this course?
A D grade is more likely to be considered passing for the purpose of credits for high school graduation than it is for the purpose of colleges looking at whether you completed your senior year with acceptable academic performance. Check with both your high school and college that you intend to attend.
Also, if it is in a dual enrollment course with college credit, the D grade will be included in calculating GPA when you apply to medical school.
Take a deep breath, @futuredoc96, your academic career isn’t over. The same thing happened to my S last year, and I’ll tell you how his high school and his future college handled it. My S’s high school (public) had him complete an online requirement for the course he failed. It’s called “credit recovery,” and it’s free of charge for students in your circumstances. My S did this by working at a computer in the school library. By working several hours a day, he was able to complete the work by graduation, but the school would have allowed him to walk at graduation (without giving him the diploma) had he not quite finished the course. As for the college, he notified admissions and explained his circumstances. The college he chose is a highly-selective LAC. Admissions was understanding about his circumstances (they’ve heard it all, many times) and he was given the choice to enroll in the fall under academic probation. Your college may handle things differently, but I suspect you will be okay, as my Ss circumstances were much worse than yours.
Now for what you should do. First, tell your parents. They will help you with the steps you need to take. As a parent who has been through this, I guarantee that your parents will get over the shock of your grade and will want to help you–that’s what parents do. They’re tougher than you think and are your best advocates. Then, you will need to talk to your counselor and do whatever is required for graduation. Your last call will be to your college admissions officer to see how your college will handle the circumstances.
Try not to be too hard on yourself. You took on a challenge and you’ve probably now learned a couple of really valuable lessons; namely, seek help at the first sign of academic trouble, let your parents know when bad things happen, and know that mistakes in life can be corrected with honesty and work. Good luck to you, and keep us posted on what happens.
One more thing. Let @ucbalumnus’s dire predictions about your gpa and grad school roll right off your back. Your dual enrollment grades will not be configured in your college gpa, and I sincerely doubt that your future graduate school is going to be too interested in your D in precalc as a 17-year-old student, should you be required to send transcripts from all colleges attended. By the time you’re applying for grad school, you will have racked up many more A’s in courses far harder than precalc. Some people just can’t resist adding insult to injury. Sheesh. I wish posters could be rated for the unhelpfulness of their comments as well as the helpfulness.
“should you be required to send transcripts from all colleges attended”
@dec51995 - Whenever the OP applies for admission to a degree program at an accredited college or university in the US, or for a job that requires all college and university transcripts, yes the OP will need to provide an official copy of the transcript from this dual enrollment course. There is absolutely no way around that. So yes, the grade will follow the OP forever. However, you are absolutely correct that the older that grade gets, the less it will matter. By the time the OP applies to grad school, if the rest of the OP’s academic record is solid, this ancient bad grade will barely matter at all. If the OP is able to re-take the class during the summer, depending on the policy of the dual enrollment college/university, the D may even disappear entirely.
It will serve you well in the future if you also learn not to place the blame for your poor grades on your professors.
Tell your parents now so they can help you. Yes, you are a senior and you need to handle this, but their job is to help you and they can’t do that if they don’t know there is a problem. They may want to go to the counselor with you.
This is one reason I do not like dual enrollment or early college high school. Our school is very good about warning students and even makes parents and students sign something acknowledging this risk. It affects only a couple of kids a year but it happens every year.
Have you talked to the professor about what you can do to improve?
“Whenever the OP applies for admission to a degree program at an accredited college or university in the US, or for a job that requires all college and university transcripts, yes the OP will need to provide an official copy of the transcript from this dual enrollment course. There is absolutely no way around that.”
Okay, @happymomof1, you win. OP will have to include transcripts in his/her grad school application. How about commenting on @ucbalumnus’ ridiculous assertion that courses earned for high school credit will be included in the student’s calculated undergraduate gpa for medical school admission. I haven’t applied to medical schools, but this idea seems to run counter to the way that undergraduate colleges view dual enrollment. Most colleges won’t take a one-for-one correspondence for dual enrollment (or AP/IB) credits. Most will allow only a limited number to replace college credits or to meet prerequisites without giving credit. The rationale seems to be that courses taken to fulfill high school requirements should be viewed as high school work. I find it hard to believe that a double standard would exist such that courses that likely won’t be counted as college work for the sake of degree advancement at the undergraduate level would be considered in the gpa by the target institution at the graduate level.
All of this is academic. OP needs to focus on how to rectify his/her current situation, not worry about the life-affecting consequences four years hence. Talk about misdirected counsel!
It’s very close to the end of the term. This is an “emergency” because the OP didn’t take action earlier in the term.
To the OP, doesn’t your HS offer precalculus? Gotta ask, why was this being taken as a duel enrollment course at a college.
My dd took two courses at the community college prior to her senior year of high school (summer). We had to fill out and sign lots of permissions and agreements, prior to her cc admission, with acknowledgements stating that the courses would be calculated into her high school and future college GPA’s.
These grades have followed her throughout college.
Med student hopefuls are required to submit transcripts from all colleges attended, even in high school. So yes, a D in a DE course is factored into GPAs calculated by med schools. But a med school app would also reflect college course was taken in high school and would probably have little, if any, impact on med school admissions.
Jugulator saved me from typing the same response. when D applied to law school she had to include transcripts for the college courses that she took in high school and the LSAC did calculate the grades into her overall gpa.
So what is y’alls point, @Jugulator, @ucbalumnus, @happymomof1? That the OP has forfeited every chance for med school and should give up on college altogether and apply to the local McDonald’s?
Like many threads, something is posted and the post spins off into a different universe. Here, OP’s screen name is “future doc96” and in response to OP, connecting screen name with post, a comment about effect of D on med school app was made which then spun OP from original question into back and forth about D on med school applications. I would suggest OP reread post #1 and ignore back and forth about D and med school as it won’t by itself have much, if any, effect on med school admission. OP needs to solve immediate concern. Good luck.
These comments are funny because I really did work at McDonald’s. I have talked to my counselor and parents and I have a few options. This isn’t an ideal situation and I know in the future I will need to get help immediately and try to adjust to my professor’s teaching style. Thanks for all the comments. Oh, and to answer a question I saw above my school is on this weird curriculum called “Math I, Math II…” So being a first year senior it would not have served me well to go that route. I thought I was doing myself a favor by taking precal but hindsight is 20/20.
@Jugulator20 Thank you!! I made this account in the middle of 10th grade and they are judging!! I don’t even want to be a doctor anymore, I just really don’t care enough to change my name. People like that with their weed out culture are why America is gonna miss out on a lot of would-be good doctors.
@futuredoc96 I hope you told parents by now. They can help figure out your immediate real issue, which is graduating!! Also, your guidance counselor should be able to help you get to that result! Good luck. At this point, leave the woulda coulda shoulda behind and keep looking forward. Just don’t let anymore time go by before you get help!
My daughter failed a required class in her top lac, retook it at a community college, graduated from her college in STEM, finished graduate school and has a very good job. Many people do not have a straight trajectory.
Questions about college transcripts for dual enrollment courses, summer college programs, and ancient bad grades at previous colleges and universities appear almost every day here at CC. Evidently, many high school guidance counselors, coordinators of dual enrollment programs, and directors of college summer programs designed for high school students aren’t very good at clarifying the details of college credit and college transcript issues to students and their parents. Or maybe it is just that the students (and their parents) aren’t paying attention - which would explain all of the questions about ancient bad grades that appear in the Transfers Forum.
Yes the transcripts will follow the student for life.
Yes certain graduate programs will average those grades in with all other grades earned while enrolled in college.
However, provided a student does well in college it is very unlikely that one or two bad grades earned in a dual enrollment course, or in summer courses while still in high school, will keep that student out of a particular grad school program or other post-college career. Even several years worth of ancient bad grades won’t automatically keep a student out of any particular grad school program or other post-college career provided there are several years worth of newer good grades in that student’s academic history.