Retaking failed courses and academic forgiveness

Question: I got a few Fs a few years ago at the university I'm currently attending , when I was still having a hard time adjusting to living on my own. I ended up going back home and retaking two of the three failed courses over at the local CC before coming back.

At the moment, my University GPA is around 3.22, with still a year of courses left to take, so I can definitely bring it up (or down). The thing is, the UC system has an academic forgiveness policy where retaking a failed course at a UC replaces the grade, hence bringing up my GPA more so than taking another class. I understand that most pharmacy schools only take the average between the two, but is it a good idea to retake those classes at UCSD nonetheless? And how do pharmacy schools look at a third retake of a class? Would you consider that there are better things to do during the school year than to retake a class purely for boosting my UC GPA, which is the sole benefit it seems to endow?

The three classes that I failed were CHEM 6A (First course in general chemistry for the science/engineering major), PHYS 2D (modern physics for the science/engineering major), and MATH 20C (Analytical Calculus, again for the science/engineering major). I retook CHEM 6A and MATH 20C class getting B's for both classes at my CC. Grade-wise, it's not the best, and I think I can definitely do better than that now. Also, as far as I know, modern physics isn't a pre-requisite for admission, but would still be a good idea to retake it and leave no Fs in any of my courses, right?

Lastly, I want to know where I stand, GPA-wise, for applications later on. Are there any particular GPAs I should be calculating? I'm assuming overall GPA, science GPA, and possibly pre-req GPA if I have time. Also, what constitutes science GPA when pharmacy ADCOMs look at it? For MD/DO paths, I know math, physics, chemistry and biology are considered.


Answer: While your school may grant you academic forgiveness, please understand that the PharmCas transcript (if that is how you are applying) will show the course each time you enrolled. We will see that you failed the courses and the PharmCas GPA reported will count both scores rather than simply the improved score. So, retaking them again might help you improve your GPA at the university, but don't think it will beneficially impact your GPA when we review your file as a committee.

However, because the classes that you struggled with are those that a normal pharmacy applicant would never have enrolled in, I would suggest that you detail very clearly in your personal statement that you were challenging yourself with those courses and struggled. As an AdCom, I can accept that.

The grades I want to see success in are: Chem, Orgo, Bio, and Calculus. If you have good grades in those courses (and/or good PCAT scores), you should be in decent shape depending on which schools you are applying to. As noted in an earlier blog entry, because many of the California schools do not utilize the PCAT, their decision making is skewed toward applicants with higher GPAs. In a case such as that described, I am not certain if the non-PCAT / PharmCas schools will look at your entire transcript or accept the academic forgiveness granted by your university, and thus, your significantly improved GPA. For your sake, I hope the latter.

Good luck.