Post-bac How long??

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Hi I didn't know if anyone could give me a range of time someone should spend working on a post-bac. to show an upward trend?

It really depends on how bad your GPA is and how much coursework you have to retake. My post-bac took 2 years. I retook a lot of classes and capped off my upward trend (which I already had started prior to the program). If you're in really dire shape, you might want to consider a SMP.
 
It depends on how many credits you need to offset your low GPA.
 
yeah, we need more info... traditionally, though, 1 or 2 years full time.
 
Reasonably speaking, people have a difficult time even "offsetting" one year's worth of bad grades in freshmen year with 3 years ahead of them. Because most postbacs are generally 1-2 years long (most postbacs are 2, while some accelerated ones like SMPs are 1), and there are students who are successful getting into medical school from there, I would have to say the average is 2. Keep in mind though that offsetting is a very broad term to be used with a grain of salt because good grades don't necessarily offset bad ones; they might raise your cumulative GPA or provide better grades for adcoms to assess, but as far as offsetting, adcoms will see all and consider all grades no matter how well you did in your postbac. Additionally, it depends what type of postbac you are talking about. If you're talking about the traditional postbac, that is for those who have not completed the prerequisites, then its 2 years. If you did the prereqs and did poorly then its 1-2 years in an SMP.

With that said, I am moving this to the postbac forum
 
I have already graduated and have been doing an informal post-bac program for 2 years. My grades have an upward trend and for the last year I have had over a 3.75 gpa, unfortunately my undergrad gpa was ~3.0. I have so many credits that my goal cannot be to change my undergrad gpa. What does someone do in this circumstance? I really appreciate the help.
 
I have already graduated and have been doing an informal post-bac program for 2 years. My grades have an upward trend and for the last year I have had over a 3.75 gpa, unfortunately my undergrad gpa was ~3.0. I have so many credits that my goal cannot be to change my undergrad gpa. What does someone do in this circumstance? I really appreciate the help.

I'm somewhat in this situation. I was excluded from UCF due to my grades and my exiting GPA from there was a 1.77.

I finished my B.A. at Rollins and had an institutional GPA there of 3.02.

I've been a post-bacc at UNF for a year and have a 3.6 GPA here, but my cumulative is still around 2.75, due to my time at UCF. I would need around 80 credit hours more to get it above a 3.0 and that just isn't realistic since I only have 20 hours left in my program.

When I leave UNF, my total post-bacc GPA should be around a 3.7-3.8.

It's not possible for me to fix my cumulative, so I have to rely on the upward trend and hope that adcoms see the upward trend over time. Fortunately, the post-bacc GPA gets a separate section, so I think that will show a real shift in my motivation and behavior.

Basically, I just have to do the best I can now and not worry about my grades from when I was younger since there's nothing I can do about it.

My suggestion is to just do the best you can now and get involved in things like research, student organizations, and volunteering to show your enthusiasm and motivation. I think those things combined with a really solid post-bacc GPA will overshadow your poor undergrad GPA.
 
Enthalpy, if you dont get in this round, do an SMP. At this point it will give you much more bang for your buck.
 
Top