<p>Let's say child got a C in a class and wanted to retake it. I'm sure they could retake it because colleges want your money - but how would that work with the QPA. Would the college take the more recent grade or the average of the two - and how would that look on a transcript. Would this depend on the college? How would that look to an employer reading someones transcript?</p>
<p>We are talking about just couple of classes at most, right?</p>
<p>What happens would depend upon the college - each school seems to have its own policy. The schools my children have attended require an advisor’s permission to re-take a course, and the second grade then replaces the first. Sometimes students who transfer to a more demanding school also repeat courses in areas in which they want to major regardless of the grade they got, if they find that the intro courses they took were not rigorous enough to prepare them to succeed in upper-level classes at their new school. This seems to happen quite a bit with language classes and STEM classes.</p>
<p>Medical schools re-calculate college QPA for science courses by including every science course ever taken, counting both grades for those that are repeated. A student who feels they need to get a better grip on the material to do well in the subsequent course might want to repeat if they got a C, but otherwise, going on to the next course might be a better use of time and money. (Students sometimes get a C as a result of poor time management or other reasons, but have actually learned the material well enough to proceed, and taking and excelling in the next course in the sequence is one way to prove this.)</p>
<p>I myself would advise one of my children to retake a course only if they feel they did not learn the material well enough the first time around, or if their grade was not high enough to proceed to the next level. Before spending the money to do a retake rather than take a new course, I would also want them to engage in some honest reflection about why they did not get a higher grade. </p>
<p>I do know plenty of individuals who have been successful after retakes, and others who have decided after a good second shot that a particular field of study is not really what they want or are suited to pursue. I think it shows a certain degree of humility and persistence to stay in the game after falling down, and except for medical schools, I do not think that most grad schools or potential employers would make a big deal of it if subsequent performance is excellent.</p>
<p>I can’t answer the question as asked, but be aware that law schools will include the original grade as well as the retake in the calculation of GPA for admissions purposes if it appears on the transcript, even if the college does not.</p>
<p>I think your kid should talk to his/her advisor as this is an important question. Also, was the course super hard? Is it just one C and the rest of the grades mostly A’s? I think you should let your child decide if s/he wants to repeat the course and not make a big deal out of it.</p>
<p>At my S’s univ., a class can only be re-taken if the original grade was a D or F.<br>
S has retaken a couple of classes (first sem. freshman yr. was a disaster). At his sch., the second grade replaces the first in the gpa calculation but the original D or F grade(s) still appear on the transcript along with the new re-take grades. His school allows a max. of three grade replacement classes to be taken during the student’s four years there.</p>
<p>At my daughter’s school it is similar to what Packmom described. Up to 4 classes with a D or below can be retaken and the new grade (whether it is better or worse) will replace the old grade in the GPA but the original grade will appear on the transcript with “retaken, not included in GPA beside it”. Retaken classes that were a C or above and retaken classes that were a D or below in excess of the 4 replacements allowed will have both the old and the new grade included on the transcript and in the GPA.</p>
<p>It is something you would have to check with your school.</p>