<p>As an undergrad, I got a D in one of my freeman classes but took it again next semester and got an A. My college has a grade replacement policy with which, the new grade replaces the old one for the purposes of my GPA but both grades appear on my transcript ( with a notification that one of them was replaced). This can be applied for up to 6 hours of freshmen level courses. </p>
<p>My question is, how do graduate schools view replaced grades for the purpose of calculating undergraduate GPA? Do they follow the undergraduate university's policy or do they have their own system? For example, I know that med schools take the average of the two grades and I've heard about some MBA programs that allow grade replacement. </p>
<p>But what about other graduate programs ( like say masters programs in engineering or economics)? Do they take the GPA your university reports as your undergraduate GPA? </p>
<p>There is no one rule. Most programs, especially those outside the very top, will accept whatever grades and GPA are presented to them. Some, typically those at the very top, will recalculate according to their own method. Ultimately, though, it is one of those things that may worry you but is outside your control. You have done the best you can, now move on and start worrying about things you can actually influence.</p>
<p>Hi cosmicfish. Thank you for your reply. Would it be advisable to to e-mail admissions committees and ask them how they evaluate it? Or since most programs just take the GPA listed on the transcript, is it better not to draw too much attention to it?</p>
<p>No, don’t ask them. Graduate schools don’t evaluate you solely on the strength of a single number (GPA) - they look at the whole of your transcript. One D in your freshman year that you later turned into an A won’t hurt you substantially, especially if the rest of your application is excellent and competitive.</p>
<p>Given the number of applicants competitive programs have, I highly doubt that they spend a lot of time re-calculating the GPAs of applicants. Could you imagine how much work that would take, given that every school has different numbers of credit hours for different classes, different course names for the same courses, and different point systems? They would have to do each transcript manually. It would take an enormous amount of time. Like @cosmicfish said, they may do this perhaps for a subset of their most competitive applicants - or maybe some borderline ones - but I can’t imagine the professors in a program sitting around with calculators re-calculating 200 or 500 GPAs. I think most of them probably take a look at the transcript GPA and them compare it with how you did in your classes (i.e., you might have a 3.2 overall GPA but a glance at your transcript shows that’s because you didn’t do well in some freshman classes but recovered by junior year, or that you had a terrible semester due to illness, or that you started out pre-med and changed to English or that your grades in all of your major classes are As and B+s).</p>
<p>But most importantly, just like @cosmicfish said…what does it matter? You can’t do anything about your undergraduate grades. They are set in stone. So asking the admissions committee how they calculate your GPA will give you no useful information, unless you’re trying to meet a minimum and the difference between the D and the A is the difference in whether you make that minimum (very unlikely).</p>
The specific example I was thinking of was MIT’s ECE department - it’s been awhile, but as I recall they require all applicants to basically fill in their transcript online, with course numbers, descriptions, credits, and final grade. They then have some type of algorithm that calculates the GPA automatically. They might review it in those borderline cases, but otherwise they just use this to ensure a consistent GPA methodology.</p>
<p>Ah, that makes a lot of sense - outsource the work to the applicant’s end I was mostly referring to the OP’s notion that many grad departments do this as a matter of course; I had no doubt that you knew what you were talking about.</p>
I was mostly referring to the OP’s notion that many grad departments do this as a matter of course; I had no doubt that you knew what you were talking about.</p>