Which is worse, a late-drop, or a bad grade?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>This question's probably really stupid, but I'm curious to see what people say since I've heard both things. </p>

<p>Basically, a friend of mine has decided she's going to do poorly on her physics midterms, and limit herself to a B- or worse in that class overall. My advice to her was it's better to drop the class late (late drop began officially on Friday, so it's not actually <em>that</em> late) and get the "W" on her transcript (I have no idea why a "W" stands for late drop, but that's another story) than to get a bad grade in the second part of a 3 part course when she already got a bad grade in the first part. </p>

<p>My other friend vehemently argued that it is worse to get the notation since it implies to medical schools that you were going to fail the course, and since she's not dropping all her other classes (which would, I think be indicative of some sort of extenuating circumstance) it's just going to look worse than getting less then or equal to a B-. </p>

<p>Since there's no real effective pre-med guidance at our school, I thought I'd put this out here, so I can either rub it in my friend's face, or I can quietly hide behind the anonymity that is CC forums.</p>

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<p>You can probably get by with 1-2 W's without raising a red flag. So use your W's with caution and only when necessary. I think a B- is probably not enough to waste a W on but lower than that...</p>

3

<p>yeah don't use your W on a class where you have the potential to get a B or even a C. There may be unfortunate circumstances when you may be facing a very possible D or F. That's when you use the W.</p>