Course Repetition & Grade Forgiveness (2024)

FAQs

Does repeating a course replace the grade? ›

Repeating a course

In most cases, if you repeat a course and earn a better grade, your GPA will automatically update to remove your first attempt from the calculation. Your transcript will still show all your attempts and the grades you received each time you took the course, but you'll receive credit for only one.

Course Forgiveness allows undergraduate students to repeat a course where a grade of C- or lower was earned and only the most recent grade will be calculated in the GPA.

When you earn a better grade the second or third time, you may be eligible for Grade Forgiveness, which allows you to replace the previous grade with the new one. This means that the old grade will be taken out of your GPA, however all attempts will still appear on your transcript.

Repeating Coursework

A course may be repeated only once. Although only the second grade earned (for better or worse) will be computed into your GPA, both grades will remain on your transcript.

Grade retention has a negative impact on all areas of a child's achievement (reading, math, and language) and social-emotional adjustment (peer relationships, self-esteem, problem behaviors and attendance). Students who are retained are more likely to drop out of school compared to students who were never retained.

Retaking the classes online and earning a higher grade will look better than a C on your transcript. Taking extra classes, so long as you can handle the increased rigor, will also help your application by boosting your weighted and unweighted GPA.

Undergraduate students may request a grade forgiveness (discount of a grade) in a repeated course by petition only. Courses may only be repeated if the grade earned is less than a "C". Petitions for Grade Forgiveness should be filed after completion of the course used to replace the previous course.

Most students will find that when they repeat a course, there is only a small impact on their overall GPA. Another way to increase your GPA is to take additional courses and do well in them.

Grade forgiveness is the process where the initial non-passing grade for a repeated class is excluded from the GPA calculation.

For the most part, colleges don't mind if you repeat a grade or have to take a year off in high school, but the answer could depend on the colleges you're interested in. For more competitive colleges, the admissions team is going to be stricter about who they let attend their school and may have different standards.

Is it bad to repeat a class in college? ›

The first thing you need to be clear about is that retaking classes (in most cases) has a minimal effect on your GPA, because retaken classes don't replace your low grades – they average in with them. That's right: your low grade won't be dropped – the retaken class grade will be added to it and averaged.

If you fail a class and retake it two or more times:

Only one grade (the lowest) is removed from GPA calculations. All other repeats are used in calculating the GPA. All grades will still show on your transcript - even the excluded grade.

For the most part, colleges don't mind if you repeat a grade or have to take a year off in high school, but the answer could depend on the colleges you're interested in. For more competitive colleges, the admissions team is going to be stricter about who they let attend their school and may have different standards.

Generally, it's better to drop a class than to fail it, as long as you can maintain a full-time course load without it.