W on writing class bad?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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D has five classes, including Bio, Orgo, Data Structure, Psy and writing class. She is CS premed sophomore and has 3.97 GPA the first year. The writing class RMP has 3.6, but she has taken classes with 3.5 before and did well on. Since this class also worked well with her schedule, she was in.

While she is doing well on all the other classes, the writing class proved to be a challenge. The professor gave vague feedback and said A paper is a paper which introduced perspective she didn’t think about and will be rare. Meanwhile, there are a lot of work for the class, three papers and three tests. In addition, the professor takes 2 months to grade essays. Currently, there is no grade for the class and D is concerned that she might get a grade lower than an A. She thinks the professor doesn’t like her and wants to go to office hour to ask the professor to grade her paper by the end of the week before she decides what to do.

Additional information, D wrote for three publications at Vandy and got paid from online blog $25 per post, so she is a solid writer.

I told her to just drop the class. It will be silly to get a B+, A- on a non premed, no CS class. But she will get a W on the transcript. She thinks she is OK with that, but I want to see what you think about it. Also she was trying to finish one year writing requirement, but because of this, she will just have one semester instead, since her schedule doesn’t have a lot of flexibility with CS premed. As she can demonstrate that she is a solid writer, is it ok just to have one semester of writing? She did have AP credits too.

Thanks a lot!

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One less-than-A-grade in one writing class isn’t going to prevent your D from getting a med school admission.

One W isn’t going to make a difference one way or another in her competitiveness for med school.

She should do what she feels is best for her. If the heavy workload is presenting an issue or she really doesn’t get along with the instructor, then withdraw from the class. But if the only issue is a potential B ( or even a C), then she should finish the class and have one less thing to worry about later.

While it’s grand your D has done other writing, med schools are not going to allow that to be substituted for an actual writing class. If a school requires 2 semesters of writing courses, then they require 2 semesters of writing courses. The writing credits MUST appear on her transcript.

BTW, med schools don’t audit a student’s transcript to see if they have fulfilled admissions requirements until AFTER a final transcript has been submitted post-graduation. A student’s acceptance can be revoked if the audit reveals they haven’t fulfilled admission requirements.

AP English Comp credit may or may not be considered as fulfilling med school admission requirements.

It depends if:

  1. the AP credit appear on her Vandy transcript as equivalent to a specific class offered at Vandy. (IOW, AP English Comp–4 credits for English 102, NOT AP eng Comp–4 credits English)

  2. the specific med school allows AP credits (that meets condition #1 above) to fulfill admission requirements. Some do; some don’t. Your D needs to check the AP credit policies for any schools she may potentially apply to.

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Thanks @WayOutWestMom. I know that I can count on you to give it to me straight! D never got to the office hours to talk to the professor, I think she is going to tough it out!

Thanks again!