I am currently a junior in college and I have to apply for graduation next year. I have done well on keeping up with courses and I am running out of general education to take. I am also close to being done with my major and minor requirements. The main concern I have is whether or not I should apply to graduate next year. I want to delay graduation for at least another semester but no more than a year because I have received too many “C’s” in a few of my courses. I want to retake these classes because I am fearful that it will affect my chances of getting into grad school. My GPA is currently a 3.25 which isn’t awful but I am still not satisfied because I have more C’s than I am comfortable with. I am planning on retaking two of these courses but there will be three C’s I have left (the remaining courses I received consistent C’s in were apart of a sequence during my freshman year where I was not doing all that I could to get a better grade because I was having a tough time adjusting to college). I know I could easily raise my GPA by taking other courses and getting good grades but that will never replace the C’s that I have received. I have heard that some schools do not allow you to retake courses in which you receive a “C”. Is this true? Also, how will these low scores affect my schooling in the future? Just for extra information, money is not an issue at this college because it is a CSU and it’s not that expensive. The only thing that I would need to pay are some extra fees that my cal grant will not cover since it is expiring after next year but I could get a job to pay for this while I take a little bit of a lighter load (but still enough to receive 100% financial aid, so about 12 units). So what would you advise? Should I fill out the graduation application and get ready to graduate next year or should I try to clean up the mess that was my first (and some of my second) years of college?
Financial aid aside, the real cost is spending a year out of the workforce, perhaps $40k+ depending on your major.
Another consideration, many companies hire/recruit based on a May/June graduation. A December graduation might take you out of sync.
You will need to check with your school but, I am nearly certain you are correct - retaking a C course doesn’t re-set the grade. Most also cap your re-takes for Ds and Fs at 2 or 3 - so, there’s a limited opportunity.
I’d encourage you to graduate on time. A 3.25 in college is a pretty good GPA, what do you want to do next?
That would be the other tricky part. I am a music major and I would like to compose but that is a long road from now. I am thinking of getting into teaching voice in my community and starting a business with that or working for a company in town that hires teachers (I know a couple places). This would be both a temporary and permanent thing. Temporary because I think it will supply my income while I write music on the side and permanent because I would enjoy doing it as a full time career especially since I don’t think I can make a living purely off of writing music. I would also want to go to graduate school but I might hold off on that until a year or so just to establish a job and really polish up what I learned in school.