<p>I need to decide right now whether or not I should retake this one course (Graphics) that I did poorly in my freshman year (I am in third year of Electrical Engineering).</p>
<p>I am looking to apply to graduate school (for MEng or MSc, I'm not sure yet). And this Graphics course is really effecting my GPA but is not an Electrical Engineering course (we had a common first year for Engineering at the University I attend so I had to take this course).</p>
<p>My question is: is it worth retaking this course? Or do graduate schools not care about courses outside of your major? Retaking this course would show on my transcript that I have retaken it, and the original mark would stay on, but would no longer contribute to the cumulative GPA. Retaking this course would improve my GPA from 3.76 to 3.83.</p>
<p>eg1, the thing is (which my apologies I should have mentioned earlier) that if I get all 4.0’s this semester, this would have about the same impact on my GPA as retaking this one course.</p>
<p>Makes more sense to focus on doing well in new classes, in my opinion. And even then, the change to your GPA is trivial. Get research experience, if you need to, or study for the GRE, again, if you need to. Talk to professors about classwork, their research, grad school – anything to develop a relationship so that you’ll have people to ask for letters.</p>
<p>If instead of re-taking this course you do something more meaningful (i.e. research project, design project, other upper level/grad course, etc) then don’t re-take this course bc given your GPA that experience would help a ton more in MSEE acceptances. </p>
<p>However, if instead of re-taking you just do nothing or take some blow-off class, I’d recommend re-taking and getting as high a GPA as possible for those top tier EE schools. </p>