<p>I attended a community college after high school and I honestly slacked off and received bad grades there. I was wondering if can I start clean at another CC and transfer only that college coursework on my transfer application or do I have to submit all the colleges that I went to? Will they know how many colleges I went to and my old grades from the CC where I messed up. please answer if you know for a fact and not some of your negative opinions. thanks.</p>
<p>Eeps. I hope you’re wearing flame proof undies.</p>
<p>No flame-thrower here. I think what this common question points to is how many kids go off to college (community or four year colleges) without the basic understanding that their college transcripts follow them for their <em>entire</em> academic life. </p>
<p>While I don’t believe the dire warning will deter or assist most of this set of young college students to avoid completely trashing their GPAs, clearly there are too many students who have almost no clue that bombing in college out can’t be washed away by simply moving to a new college and starting afresh. Where this becomes most troublesome is after the student has matured and has difficulties transferring back into a college and has the old transcripts dragging them down.</p>
<p>Short answer: No. Can’t start over or pretend the old transcript doesn’t exist. Many colleges can check if you’ve enrolled at other places (not necessarily the transcript itself). Lying on an application can get you dismissed, even after you are enrolled at the new university. Don’t do it.</p>
<p>The good news. Some colleges do not use your old GPA at the new school once accepted. In that sense, you can start anew, go for graduation honors, etc. However, read the fine print in policies - many colleges still use the old GPA to determine honors (if that is important to you).</p>
<p>I guess if there is any object lesson to take away from reading these threads is that parents (and colleges) would be doing kids a huge favor if they made a bigger deal out of informing kids ahead of time about the consequences of bombing out. When having all the chat about college-futures with your kids, <em>talk</em> about exit strategies, how a “W” works, how to salvage a semester that has gone-to-h*ll (ie: save as many classes as you can and ditch maybe one), how to plan a good semester (mix of classes, don’t overload, plan for success the first semester in), etc. And above all, talk frankly about what options get cut off if one bombs one or more semesters–that the transcript follows so mitigate the worst of problems by managing the semester that has slipped out of control.</p>
<p>But in the end, even with that information, semesters can go bad. The good news is that there are options to finish college for most of these students if they really want it and are willing to be flexible with their different set of options.</p>