Hello all, I am currently enrolled at a local community college and the process has been a nightmare. At this moment I am struggling with my GPA as some old transcripts surfaced from courses I took 20 years ago and have brought my GPA down from a 4.0 to a 2.45. I admit, when I was younger, I signed up for a few classes, went a few times and then never went back. Well 20 years later I decided to get myself back into college but, as you can see it is very frustrating to see my entire last semester go up in flames because of a dumb decision I made as a kid. Granted, I “committed the crime”.
The question is, can I get them expunged? I wanted to start over, and told the school as much when I started, but they have been extremely limited on the information they are sharing, either because they don’t know or because …. Well who knows. They tell me that its not possible and that it is a federal mandate that all schools must keep all grades on my transcripts regardless of their age. I find that hard to believe as I went to another school recently and took a few courses and that transcript doesn’t include my previous (20 year old) transcripts. In fact that school even told me, if you don’t want to send them to us we won’t use them.
Any suggestions? Those old classes will keep me from getting into med school.
There are a total of 3 classes on that old transcript, all with 0 GPA (F).
When you apply for admission to a degree program at an accredited college or university in the US (or for a job that requires all of your transcripts), you are obligated to provide official copies of all of your transcripts. No matter how old. No matter how ugly. No matter where in the world you took those classes. Period.
What that institution you send your transcripts to decides to make of all of them is up to that place. Yes, some will only be interested in transcripts that record courses that are pertinent your new degree program (or to your job). But others will indeed collect every single one. Technically, that is what accredited colleges and universities are required to do for degree-seeking students. It really is much more about them all playing nice with each other when it comes time to renew their accreditation than it is with setting up a “gotcha” for any one student.
Those old bad grades won’t automatically mean you can’t get into Med School. They also won’t automatically mean that you can’t transfer anywhere.
Keep in mine that any transfer institution that has an admissions team that cannot recognize the difference between old bad grades from your young-and-stupid phase, and your new good grades, is a place that you don’t want to associate yourself with. Stay in touch with your Advisor at your CC. Work closely with the Transfer Advisor, and eventually with the PreMed Advisor after you do transfer. They have seen records worse than yours. They will have good ideas for how to best work your way through the whole process and achieve your academic goals.
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