An old "W" on transcript... bad?

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lizzo76

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I wonder if anyone has any personal knowledge of this type of situation...

Back in 2003 (yeah, almost 8 years ago) I started to take Human Anatomy & Physiology I at the Harvard Extension School. At the time, I worked at Harvard and could take the classes for free. I took it just for "fun" - it was not for OT. Over the time that I worked at Harvard, I took a bunch of classes for personal enrichment, all but that one non-credit since I wasn't taking them with any goal in mind and didn't want to have to do every assignment and test. But, I decided to take A&P for credit, thinking well, it could come in handy even though I don't have a goal in mind right now.

I ended up dropping it, not because it was too hard, but because it met on Saturdays and I decided I didn't want to put my free time into it. (Remember, I was working full-time and taking classes purely to take advantage of a perk of employment, so I had no reason to give up significant free time for them.) Since I wasn't paying for the class, I wasn't conscious of the drop deadlines the way I would be if I were concerned about getting a refund. I stopped going after maybe two weeks, but didn't bother to drop it for quite some time... I never thought I'd ever be sending my Extension School transcript to anyone, so a "W" didn't concern me. Honestly, it didn't even feel like I was in "school" - I was just playing around with the free classes. My coworkers would routinely sign up for a few different courses each term, check each one out, and then withdraw from the ones in which they had little interest. It wasn't the same situation as being in college and having to take courses (or even intentionally taking prereqs after college) and then being a "quitter." But now I fear it looks that way!

Now I am taking prereqs at Harvard for application to OT programs. Last semester, I took A&P and got an A. I'm now in A&P II and expect I'll probably get an A in this class, too. The old A&P class from which I withdrew actually wouldn't have worked as a prereq, anyway, since it didn't have a lab. (They have since revamped the course.)

Does anyone think that a "W" on my transcript 8 years ago, when I've since taken the class and gotten an A would look bad? It's on the transcript among a bunch of random (mostly arts and humanities) non-credit courses. I don't think anyone would normally think anything of it, except that it happens to be a W in a class which is a prereq for OT, though I was not taking it for that purpose. It actually never even occurred to me that a transcript existed for me and that it had a W on it until I looked at it last term when I re-opened my account to register for my new class.
 
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I wonder if anyone has any personal knowledge of this type of situation...

Back in 2003 (yeah, almost 8 years ago) I started to take Human Anatomy & Physiology I at the Harvard Extension School. At the time, I worked at Harvard and could take the classes for free. I took it just for "fun" - it was not for OT. Over the time that I worked at Harvard, I took a bunch of classes for personal enrichment, all but that one non-credit since I wasn't taking them with any goal in mind and didn't want to have to do every assignment and test. But, I decided to take A&P for credit, thinking well, it could come in handy even though I don't have a goal in mind right now.

I ended up dropping it, not because it was too hard, but because it met on Saturdays and I decided I didn't want to put my free time into it. (Remember, I was working full-time and taking classes purely to take advantage of a perk of employment, so I had no reason to give up significant free time for them.) Since I wasn't paying for the class, I wasn't conscious of the drop deadlines the way I would be if I were concerned about getting a refund. I stopped going after maybe two weeks, but didn't bother to drop it for quite some time... I never thought I'd ever be sending my Extension School transcript to anyone, so a "W" didn't concern me. Honestly, it didn't even feel like I was in "school" - I was just playing around with the free classes. My coworkers would routinely sign up for a few different courses each term, check each one out, and then withdraw from the ones in which they had little interest. It wasn't the same situation as being in college and having to take courses (or even intentionally taking prereqs after college) and then being a "quitter." But now I fear it looks that way!

Now I am taking prereqs at Harvard for application to OT programs. Last semester, I took A&P and got an A. I'm now in A&P II and expect I'll probably get an A in this class, too. The old A&P class from which I withdrew actually wouldn't have worked as a prereq, anyway, since it didn't have a lab. (They have since revamped the course.)

Does anyone think that a "W" on my transcript 8 years ago, when I've since taken the class and gotten an A would look bad? It's on the transcript among a bunch of random (mostly arts and humanities) non-credit courses. I don't think anyone would normally think anything of it, except that it happens to be a W in a class which is a prereq for OT, though I was not taking it for that purpose. It actually never even occurred to me that a transcript existed for me and that it had a W on it until I looked at it last term when I re-opened my account to register for my new class.


I would not worry about the "W" at all. I had 11 W's on my transcripts when I applied for OT school and I was still accepted. Technically a school is not supposed to hold a W against you or really even look at it since many reasons may exist to why you received it(maybe a death in family, loss of job, etc). If you apply to any schools that do interviews explain to them about the W if you are really worried about it. Good luck!
 
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