transferring to USC with F's on my record.

corvin
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:32:36 +0000

Hi,

I had a question. I first started college a fall of 08, my dad lost his job about two and a half after I started school and so I started to work 7 days a week at work so my family wouldn’t lose our house. A few weeks later my grandpa got really sick and started going in and out of the hospital. Because of the timing of all these events, if I dropped any of my courses the financial aid would go back to the Government and I would have had to pay out of pocket for the courses, I wouldn’t have been able to get refund at all. I dropped only what I could afford, which was only two of them out of four, paid for them out of pocket and got F’s for the other two courses.

When I asked the registrar what I could do about it they said all I could do is academic renewal; so I kept the F’s. The next semester my family was still doing bad, but my dad started taking money out of his 401k to support us, my grandfather was out of the hospital and seemed like he was getting better so I dropped back down to 5 days at work. Two months into the semester. My grandpa got extremely sick again and the doctors told me there was nothing they could do, so I dropped out of all my courses and managed to get a 50% refund. A month later he passed away.

This fall, I went to my local CC and I’m taking 20-21 credits, so far I’m getting straight A’s. It’s my dream to go to USC, but I dunno how much emphasis they’ll gonna place on those two F’s. That doesn’t show my potential or my dedication to school; I know there’s a place on USC’s Application to explain anything i didn’t get a chance to on the application but I’m afraid that they won’t care. If I continue with my straight A’s, I’ll only have a 2.9 gpa. Without those F’s it’d obviously be a 4.0.

I take full responsibility for my grades, but I don’t want a couple bad grades to ruin my chances to get into USC all because of a bad situation I was in. Does anybody know if they take into account my situation, and how much bearing those grades will have on their decision?