October 19, 2016
Parents,
In my class this week, I will be covering a number of advising issues. I want to share some of the key points from class with you.
Students can retake any class in which they receive a D or F and have the grade from the second attempt at the course replace the first grade. For example if a student fails calculus and retakes it and receives a B, only the B will count in the student’s GPA. If a student has a D in Chemistry and retakes and gets an F, the F will count and the student will need to take Chemistry a third time. I advise students to talk to their advisor should they decide to repeat a class.
Students can repeat any course they take up to and including the semester they take their 60th credit hour. For most students, that means students can repeat courses for the first four semesters in college. Having a lot of AP courses will shorten this window.
Students don’t have to repeat the course the next semester but it’s generally good if they do. Students will need to get a C or better in calculus to continue into Physics and their engineering courses. In some cases, students will decide to “accept” a D in a course. Later in their junior or senior year, they may decide to repeat the course for a better GPA. Again the rule is they can repeat any course through the 60th credit hour. When they repeat the course is up to the student.
Students can only D/F repeat a course at WVU or one of its other campuses (PotomacState or WVU Tech).
When a student repeats a course the credit hours count only once. Suppose a student is taking 16 credit hours this semester and repeats a 4 hour course. The student will have essentially 12 credit hours for this semester. This could affect scholarship requirements..
Students can be transferred out of our college if
■Their GPA is below 2.00 two semesters in a row
■They get a D/F/W in the same math course twice
■They don’t complete the required courses to get into a major in 4 semesters
Many of the scholarships our students have require minimal credit hours and GPA. In nearly every case students have until the end of the 2017summer session to fulfill these requirements. Classes taken prior to their first semester at WVU don’t count in the scholarship eligibility determination, for either GPA or credit hours.
Students can take courses at home in the summer to fulfill their eligibility requirements. Both the grades and credit hours count. Students can also take on-line courses from WVU wherever they have internet access. I have students from around the world taking an on-line technical elective I teach in the summer.
In most cases, scholarships don’t pay for classes taken in the summer. If students qualify for a federal loan, they can get financial aid if they take six hours. Also the tuition and fees for classes taken in the summer are assessed based upon the number of credit hours taken. Summer classes can be very expensive.
October 26th is the last day for students to drop a class. When they drop a class, a W (for withdrawal) appears on their transcript. But, there is no grade impact of dropping a class. You do need to be aware of one major impact of withdraws. Federal financial aid requires that students successfully complete 67% of all courses attempted. Successful in this case is a D or better grade. A W or an F grade is an unsuccessful completion of a grade.
If a student withdraws from a class and fails another course they will probably be below the 67% threshold. Fortunately they have the next semester to recover. So next semester they will need to successfully complete all courses to continue receiving financial aid.
Let me close with the story of Tori. Tori struggled throughout college. She was never really strong in math/science classes. But Tori had a practical sense of engineering that many really bright students seem to lack.
There were times when Tori almost gave up, but she never quit pursuing her dream. She graduated three yearsago with a 2.00 GPA. Last spring Tori interviewed with one of the nation’s most elite consulting firms. As Tori described it, they narrowed down their candidates to 40 MBA’s from prestigious schools and her. Only fifteen candidates would be selected. Tori was one of the fifteen.
I received the email below from Tori a year later:
“I was brought onto my project and thrown into the Training & Communications team. Since my arrival, people have been dropping like flies! I replaced a Senior Consultant and currently work at the same level with 3 other Senior Consultants (one recently added). Two of these will be leaving in October and that leaves me as the most “senior” person on my team. Kind of scary, but I think it’s a good opportunity as well. When I came onto this team there was a complete lack of standardizing of any of our work and the methodologies were quite sloppy. No schedules, no templates, no formal communication between teams. A nightmare! It’s given me a great opportunity to showcase some of my engineering skills. I recently developed a data base that stores all projects, tasks and deliverables associated. It also runs reports on the work we are doing and categorizes previous items. I know this might seem like a small task, but let me tell you! It’s intense!
In the past 2.5 months, I’ve solely supported around 6 projects and work with multiples on delivering Training & Communications material to the client. I’m starting to think having to multitask with 38 credits hours the last year of college paid off. This comes so much easier to me than school ever did though…maybe it’s because I want to be here… or maybe it’s the money. I have no clue, but I’m really loving life.
I have some exciting news to share! My dreams of traveling are quickly coming true…I just found out that I will be splitting travel with one other team member to go to Naval bases and deliver in person trainings starting in November. Locations include DC, Florida, Hawaii, San Diego, Italy, and Japan. I never saw this happing a year ago! Crazy how your life can change so quickly.”
Tori’s experience is not unique. There are those who struggle in college, but have the coping skills that make them very successful in their careers. If your student is struggling, think of the coping skills that he/she is developing. These may be more important in the long run than the math/science knowledge they are acquiring.