Unofficial Withdrawal or an F??

[iowafarmstud]

Hey! My freshman year I was foolish and took a chemical engineering class and recieved a UW(unoffical withrdawal--basically withdrawing from the class has a deadline, and after that it is a UW) but I can petition it to become an E(equivilant to an F). What is going to look "not as bad"?? Clearly, a grade like that is terrible and hurts tremendously. However, which would make more sense to do? Thanks for any imput!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[enviromed21]

Does the UW factor into your GPA?

If not, then I would take the UW, as an F(E) will dramatically alter your GPA, and recovery from the GPA damage of an F will be very difficult.

Hope this helps. Good luck🙂

 

[ArgaWarga]

Not sure I understand what the E is, but I imagine that no matter what you should mention this in your personal statement.

 

[ejk4eva]

I have one W on my transcript. None of my interviewers asked about it. I think few Ws don't mean much. On the other hand, E or F doesn't sound good...

 

[Sondra]

I would take the UW and agree that the E/F doesn't sound as good. Hopefully the UW will not count in your GPA calculation.

I had 10Ws on my transcript. Not one of my interviewers asked about them. I brought it up at the end of the day when asked if there was anything that I would like to say about my application/scores/etc. I brought it up because I didn't want it discussed at the committee with no explaination. I never mentioned it in my personal statement because I felt that my PS was a chance to sell my positive qualities, not reiterate what could be seen on my AMCAS. A few withdraws won't hurt you, but I would have an explanation ready for interviews just in case you are asked.

 

[twohearted]

I would just keep it as a UW. It will probably count as an F as I would assume that, like in the case of most schools, unoffical whithdrawals count as a 0.0 with the full credit hours. It is possible however that, like the community college I went to, your institution counts a UW as a W - not affecting your grade. In this case, it appears that it would possibly be treated as a W by AMCAS as vaugely stated here in this quote from the AMCAS instructions:

• Grades of "IF" or unauthorized/unofficial/administrative withdrawal may be treated as "F" in
the GPA depending on how they are considered by your school.

You should contact AMCAS about this after finding out how your school calculates UWs. In either result, why change from a UW to an F? After all, assuming that the grades are equivillent (hopefully not), why go through additional effort to get it changed when it will make no difference as far as AMCAS is concerned. Another argument would be based on intuition. We see F as the worst possible grade. Even if numerically equal, F just looks nastier than the UW (weak, I know, but hey.) Good luck.

 

[IckeyShuffle]

Hey! My freshman year I was foolish and took a chemical engineering class and recieved a UW(unoffical withrdawal--basically withdrawing from the class has a deadline, and after that it is a UW) but I can petition it to become an E(equivilant to an F). What is going to look "not as bad"?? Clearly, a grade like that is terrible and hurts tremendously. However, which would make more sense to do? Thanks for any imput!

definately take a withdrawal over a fail. a withdrawal shouldnt affect your GPA and an F could be detrimental. i had a W and no one ever asked about it.