Advice on Grade Forgiveness for Medical Emergency

[tesla14]

I'll try to make this post as brief as possible.

In 2014 I was taking a prereq class, and in the middle of it I had a very bad accident that resulted in TBI/spinal injury/various other things. Because of this, my family had to move me home and I was far too disabled to arrange to have an Incomplete or to finish the class, so I have an F on my transcript.

Now that I've had all my surgeries and I'm fully recovered, I was able to ask the college where I took the class what my options are for grade forgiveness. I have 2 options: move back there and take it again at that specific college, or apply for grade forgiveness. The first option would be extraordinarily expensive, but it would completely remove that grade from my transcript. The second option would remove the grade from being factored into my cumulative GPA, but it would still appear on my full academic record (albeit with an explanation about the medical circumstances.)

I was planning on emailing the adcomm office at my top pick to ask them what they would prefer me to do, but if me even asking this question will reflect poorly on me, I'm not sure I want to take the chance. All of my other prereqs will be completed at an extension school at the same university as my top choice in medical school, and there are no other grades on my transcript that are any kind of problem.

My question is, should I ask the adcomm office their preference, or should I just do the first option and move up there for a term to retake the class there?

Thank you for reading!

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[njtrimed]

I'll try to make this post as brief as possible.

In 2014 I was taking a prereq class, and in the middle of it I had a very bad accident that resulted in TBI/spinal injury/various other things. Because of this, my family had to move me home and I was far too disabled to arrange to have an Incomplete or to finish the class, so I have an F on my transcript.

Now that I've had all my surgeries and I'm fully recovered, I was able to ask the college where I took the class what my options are for grade forgiveness. I have 2 options: move back there and take it again at that specific college, or apply for grade forgiveness. The first option would be extraordinarily expensive, but it would completely remove that grade from my transcript. The second option would remove the grade from being factored into my cumulative GPA, but it would still appear on my full academic record (albeit with an explanation about the medical circumstances.)

I was planning on emailing the adcomm office at my top pick to ask them what they would prefer me to do, but if me even asking this question will reflect poorly on me, I'm not sure I want to take the chance. All of my other prereqs will be completed at an extension school at the same university as my top choice in medical school, and there are no other grades on my transcript that are any kind of problem.

My question is, should I ask the adcomm office their preference, or should I just do the first option and move up there for a term to retake the class there?

Thank you for reading!

I don't see how a bad accident that resulted in a major injury would reflect poorly on you. Would the forgiveness policy erase the grade from your record in such a way that you wouldn't have to enter it into AMCAS? What is your cumulative GPA with and without that F?

 

[tesla14]

I don't see how a bad accident that resulted in a major injury would reflect poorly on you. Would the forgiveness policy erase the grade from your record in such a way that you wouldn't have to enter it into AMCAS? What is your cumulative GPA with and without that F?

I don't think the forgiveness policy would erase the grade from my record entirely. From reading the policy statement the college sent me about this process, it seems that the grade would be removed from calculation of my cumulative GPA from my transcript, but it would still appear on a complete academic record, along with an annotation about why I was given a grade alleviation. Because it's a school-specific alleviation I think I would still have to submit it to AMCAS, especially because I only took one class at that college (it will be the only grade on my transcript from there). Without the F, my GPA would be ~3.81, with the GPA, it would be ~3.70.

I have to retake the class no matter what, the only question is whether I take it at the extension school where I'm planning on applying to medical school and take the grade forgiveness route, or whether I move up to where I was in 2014 and completely replace the grade. The other factor is that the school where I was unable to finish the class is a community college, whereas the extension school is an arm of a university, so it feels like spending an enormous amount of money to take a much less rigorous class would be a disappointing thing to have to do.

PS: thank you for responding!