Does retaking several college courses hurt you admission chances into a major…alot?
How much does it get weighed into their final decision? What if you have an amazing GPA afterwards? any thoughts on this?
No one can answer your question in a way specific to your situation since you did not name the college and major. In all likelihood, the answer is best given by the department of the major in question at the college you are at.
You need to figure out a couple of things:
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If you have to retake classes to get into a major, is that the right major for you? I read another post about someone who was struggling with pre-calculus in college and this person wanted to be a Mechanical Engineer…I would say that is not the right major for them.
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How does your college deal with retaken courses? Do they average them? So an F and a B would be a C-…still not that great.
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What is the expectations of that major? What is the competition? If you have 200 kids wanting to get into 100 engineering slots…they will probably take the kids with the best grades. Just because the minimum is a 3.0 doesn’t mean they will take you with a 3.0 ifthere are others competing.
I would sit with your adviser and talk about options and what would make sense.
@bopper If a person failed a class, it doesn’t mean the major isn’t for them. Some people like me take longer to achieve tasks and pass on the first try. For example, I failed Calculus 1 in the fall semester with a D. Retook it this semester and got B. I know it sucks when you have to retake a class, but if no one is forcing you to complete in four years why rush?
Some colleges, like Rutgers, will recaculate your GPA and add back the classes you failed. I have a 3.8 right now but rutgers recalculated it using classes I retook and gave me a 2.4 and then denied me
This is the very generic question and without details its hard to get appropriate responses. With retaking majors did you mean to changing to different ones?
@NASA2014 The OP said “retaking several classes”…one, you may be right, you may just need to figure out how to study for this type of class. But several?
In reply to NASA2014’s post.
(This is my very first post here so I apologize if it’s out of place/context/spirit)
I don’t believe that’s an accurate statement. If you take a class a second time, you have to understand the advantage you have over the other students.
I withdrew from a semester because of medical reasons and ended up just retaking all the classes. My grades were probably on pace to be in the B ranges. The second time around, material is fresh in your head and you retain at least some of it (realistically, probably a good amount of it) which gives you a clear advantage over your new peers who are seeeing this material for the first time.
I ended up with A’s in all the classes I had to re-take while putting in much less effort and work for the second attempt. If you take the class soon after the first attempt, it is almost like a review. Or think of it as having twice as much time to work on the material as your peers so it’s almost like being graded by a different standard.
The classes could be from a long time ago too. I failed/dropped like 8 classes in 2011-2013 because I had no motivation. I retook and passed all of them with As/Bs starting in 2015 once I’d figured my life out.
@bopper My school will completely wipe out the previous grade and replace the “highest” grade in your GPA (the only downside is that there’s a track record of all your grades). So if you had an F, retook it and got an A, there you go…youre a 4.0 student.
However, they did change something in their admission criteria, and i guess i just wanted someones input.
Are you familiar with the admission process? So recently, they’ve added to their criteria that if you’ve taken an upper division course and did poorly it will count against you. Has this always been the case? Has it always been advised not to take an upper level division class before you’ve gotten into your major? I want to get a feel for things since im not familiar with the process at all.
For example: if i wanted to be a finance major, haven’t declared it and decided to take an upper division Finance course and failed. It would count against me. (which makes sense) But what’s the normal procedure. I guess i didn’t get the mojo, but has it always been stressed to try to get into your major before you take an upper division course? I was never ‘warned’ or ‘advised’ not to take an upper division course before hand so i just wanted to get someones input.
Usually an upper division course would have pre-requisites that you need to take before you take it.