Hi, all. I'm new to this forum. I am currently a junior at a somewhat well-known, rigorous public university, majoring in Linguistics, with minors in Biology and Psychology. I hope to begin the application process to OT schools next year, but I am extremely nervous. You see, the summer before my freshman year, I registered for 3 online summer courses at a local community college (Fine Arts, Intro to Psychology, and Elementary Statistics). It was an extremely hectic summer, and I was very ignorant and underestimated the rigor and fast pace of online summer courses. Thus, I ended up withdrawing from the psychology and fine arts course, not knowing that graduate schools do indeed look at withdrawn courses. I also wanted to withdraw from the statistics course, but said course started earlier than the others, and so it was too late and I ended up failing the class. I was appalled at myself ( I had never gotten anything lower than a B+ in high school, save for in AP Chemistry (B-) and AP Physics (C+), which were both weighted), but I did not panic too much because at my university, transient credit does not factor into one's university GPA (plus, I did not know I even wanted to go to grad school then). Once in college, I took psychology and retook statistics and got As in both. Towards the end of my freshman year, I decided that I wanted to become an occupational therapist, and started taking prereqs for various schools, volunteering, etc. I have attempted to atone for my past mistakes by getting all As in the prereqs I have taken thus far (stats, psych, abnormal psych, medical terminology, and a sociology course), and hope to continue this streak (I am taking A&P I this semester, as well as developmental psych and a kinesiology course). I am also currently assisting in a research project, am bilingual (English and Spanish), have over 60 OT shadowing hours so far (I hope to achieve more hours by next summer), have a 3.9 overall GPA, and have several extracurriculars. As OTCAS calculates duplicate courses by averaging them, I will get a C for Elementary Statistics. Thus, even if I get As in all my other prereqs, the best pre-req GPA I can get is 3.78. Because of this, I'm terrified that I've ruined my chances, as my top three dream schools use OTCAS. Would one C among a bunch of As be all that terrible? Holistically, do OT schools tend to look more favorably on prereqs taken at a 4 year college rather than a CC? I am becoming so neurotic over all of this, and would greatly appreciate any input/suggestions.
General Admissions & OTCAS A Summer Session of Shame
- Thread starter Pinafore
- Start date
I'm going to be applying to several schools next year, and based on my research, most (if not all) of the schools I'm applying to take your highest grade into consideration when looking at an applicant's prerequisite courses. I received a C in Physiology and then retook this class and earned an A. The schools I'm applying to informed me that they will ignore the C and only take the A grade into consideration when calculating my prereq GPA.
Also, the schools I'll be applying to informed me that they don't prefer applicant's who took prereqs at a University over those who completed these classes at a community college.
Good luck!!!
Also, the schools I'll be applying to informed me that they don't prefer applicant's who took prereqs at a University over those who completed these classes at a community college.
Good luck!!!