1 A 2 B's vs 2 A's 1 W

[snwbubble]

Hi all,

I'm currently taking a general chemistry class, microbiology, and physiology. Prior to the semester, I had heard from multiple sources not to take micro and physio in the same semester but was a bit overconfident after getting all A's in the previous semester.

In any case, I'm currently getting an A in Chem, a low A/high B in micro, and a low B in physio. I feel like I'm operating at 90% capacity already and often don't have enough time to study for all of my classes. If I stick it out, I think I can pull an A and 2 B's. But if I drop physio, I'm confident I'd have enough time to study to get 2 A's in Chem and Micro, with plans to retake Physio in the fall. Further complicating this is the fact that I'm a post-bacc student and have quite a few W's from my first time in college (that was about 8-10 years ago), though I haven't had any since I started my post-bacc studies. 

Should I drop physiology and retake it in the fall?

Thank you all in advance for any advice!

[Anachronist]

If you hadn't said you had a lot of W's prior, I would have said, yeah sure, withdraw and take it in the fall (which I'm still leaning toward) time isn't seen on a transcript that clearly because all the classes are stacked together, often they will just skim down the grade column without paying too much attention to the temporal separation. I had that happen in an interview, the interviewer picked up my transcript, held it up like and x-ray, and then skimmed it in 3 seconds, put it down and said "looks like you have a lot of A's." From tech school to post bacc, that spanned about 10 years. The time, nor the W's and P's I had were asked about. The only thing that might change that recommendation is your current GPA, which is...?

If you're protecting a very high GPA or trying to stay above 3.5 then I'd say protect it and withdraw. If the B's won't affect your GPA then the W's don't look great. Basically, if you're performing very high W's don't matter, if you aren't, then W's look worse. Make sense?

[katieo]

I was gonna say it’s a no brainer but the post bacc aspect and history makes it a little more difficult. Ultimately I agree a W is probably better. I had a lot of Ws in my undergrad, not to mention a dreaded NP that I thought would ruin my life forever. I think they ended up being fairly irrelevant to schools, and they just wanted to see the high GPA and As in prereqs. Physio is pretty important. I think having a B in a prerequisite is probably gonna look worse than a W.