<p>Hey, got a question and looking for some insight.</p>
<p>During this past summer I took both semesters of undergraduate General Chemistry. Grades ended up being:</p>
<p>Gen. Chem. Lecture 1 C
Gen. Chem. Lecture 2 C
Gen. Chem. Lab 1 B+
Gen. Chem. Lab 2 A</p>
<p>(My school treats Lecture and Lab as 2 different grades/classes in general and on my transcript.)</p>
<p>I know medical school is very competitive so I was thinking I'd take over both Gen. Chem. Lecture courses this coming Fall/Spring semesters to get a better grade. What do you all think? Redo the two classes and do better? Or would raising my Chem. grade be wasting my time? </p>
<p>(I learned a lot this summer and I'm confident that my grade would be better than a C for both lecture classes.)</p>
<p>Background Info:
Never took Chem. in HS, this college level Gen. Chem. course was my Chemistry class.
I'm starting my 2nd year of college. In honors at my university.
GPA and extracurricular activities need work but I still have at least 2-3 years to work on those.</p>
<p>Also I was thinking that I could spin the whole taking over Gen. Chem thing in my direction for medical school. Like I got my first taste of chemistry during the summer, decided to persevere and do better a 2nd time around now that I had some background. Blah blah blah. </p>
<p>Thanks for your time in advance.</p>
<p>Retakes are not generally advised if you earned at least a C in the original course. Retakes put you in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.’</p>
<p>If you retake and do well–your A is discounted by adcoms (“student ought to get an A–student’s had the material before”). If you retake and get anything except an A then it just looks very bad. (And don’t forget for AMCAS ALL attempts at a course must be reported.)</p>
<p>A retake is only advisable if you’re planning on applying ONLY to DO programs were grade replacement is allowed. </p>
<p>Moving on to higher level chem classes and doing well in those would more than adequately demonstrate your ability to do well in chem and would probably demonstrate it more convincingly than a retake. </p>
<p>Regardless of whether you retake or not, you will also likely to increase the number of BCPM classes you’ll be taking in the next 3 years to dilute the effect of those Cs on your sGPA.</p>
<p>About the only exception to the above advice would be if you genuinely do not have an adequate grounding in general chem to move on and do well in your next course.</p>
<p>IOW, don’t retake just to make your record look stronger–it won’t help.</p>
<p>Most colleges and universities only allow you to repeat classes in which you received a grade of D or F. A C is a perfectly acceptable passing grade as far as colleges are concerned and they generally see no reason why it would have to be repeated. Here in California if you were going to a Community College, California State University or University of California campus you would certainly not be allowed to repeat it since so many more students register for General Chemistry than there are seats for, allowing someone who has passed the course with a satisfactory grade denies another student the chance to take it at all.</p>