Hey. So I was planning on taking 5 courses this semester, but I've decided to drop 2 of them cause they were starting to get really hard and I was feeling really uncomfortable. I've dropped them on mosaic cause it said the last day to drop courses without failure would be Nov. 4. So I went on my course history and it still shows both of the courses I've dropped and it has a 'W' under grades. Did I do something wrong and it will stay there forever on my record? :( I'm just very confused.

No you didn't do anything wrong. W is assigned to any course you drop. You'll also get a part of the tuition fee back, check your mosaic account finances.

Back in my day people took 7 courses and didn't complain about it. Kids these days....

W stands for Withdrawn, by the way. It will stay there forever, since you canceled it after the add/drop deadline. If you aren't happy with it, you can ask your adviser to reinstate you for those courses, before it's too late.

There is a difference between the last day to drop without financial penalty (the drop/add deadline - Sept 14 this year) and the last day to cancel without failure by default. The language matters here - dropping a course and cancelling a course are not the same thing. After the drop/add deadline, the course will remain on your transcript as withdrawn or cancelled - if you cancel a lot of courses part way through, it can be a red flag to employers, grad schools, professional schools, etc. However, you will not receive a grade for the course and it will not count towards your GPA. You get a portion of your money back, depending on when you cancel the course - a schedule is available on the student accounts and cashiers website.

After the Nov 4 deadline, if you cancel the course you will get a zero and it will count on your transcript and towards your GPA as a failed course. Obviously, that is worse than having a withdrawn on your transcript.

Related question: does anyone know if grad school selection committees hold it against you when you have withdrawals on your trasnscript? I withdrew from a class last year (but I'll retake it this winter), and am thinking about withdrawing from another one this semester cos I got clobbered on the midterm yesterday. See, I can maintain an 11.5 average if I drop this class, but that'll probably go down to 10 this year if I get a bad mark in it. It's not a core course. And it's going to be a lot of work just for a likely C-.

Originally Posted by old guy

Related question: does anyone know if grad school selection committees hold it against you when you have withdrawals on your trasnscript? I withdrew from a class last year (but I'll retake it this winter), and am thinking about withdrawing from another one this semester cos I got clobbered on the midterm yesterday. See, I can maintain an 11.5 average if I drop this class, but that'll probably go down to 10 this year if I get a bad mark in it. It's not a core course. And it's going to be a lot of work just for a likely C-.

As a grad student with at least 1 withdrawl per semester in the last 3 years of my undergrad.

No, no they don't.

While that may be your experience, I can tell you that depending on the supervisor they absolutely can and do hold it against you. It can depend on several factors. First if your proposed supervisor likes you and sees a fit, it likely won't be an issue if you have a couple of cancelled courses, especially if you happened to excel at what your proposed supervisor teaches/researches, and show an affinity, and a passion for it.

If you are applying without any pre-developed relationship it can make a big difference especially if you are amongst an army of students applying for a specific supervisor. Don't kid yourself, supervisors can see the reason why you have maintained that average is because you have dropped out of courses.

A faculty member once told me her perspective on the whole dropping courses thing: dropping courses, unless with a medical/family or some other extrenuating circumstance can show one of two things:

1) poor judgement by the individual, why are taking courses that are not in your league and feel you need to cancel. One or two of those is fine, but a whole bunch of them? OR
2) when the going gets tough, you quit instead of toughing it out and trying to right the ship (and perhaps learning from it in the process/

Both of those are bad from a grad student point of view as the going will (and should) get tough, and you have shown a willingness to quit, and depending on your discipline (as I can't speak for all of them) you generally need good judgement.

Please don't hammer me with what about this situation or that situation, I get there are circumstances sometimes, I am just pointing our her point of view as she relayed it to me. In her view, she wouldn't take a student with a bunch of cancelled courses. And that is her prerogrative of course, just like your supervisor didn't care about them is his/her prerogative.

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

As a grad student with at least 1 withdrawl per semester in the last 3 years of my undergrad.

No, no they don't.

OK, so given you've dropped classes yourself, what's your opinion:

1. This class is guaranteed to bring down my average;
2. It's not a core course (and I don't even need the credit, I'm a second degree student);
3. I did want to learn the material (mathematical modeling), but I will still be able to read what he posts on the course website and I have the software on my computer already if I want to keep learning it on my own;
4. the classroom is a smelly unventilated oven and dropping the class frees up 8 hours in my schedule;
5. it's not like I'm going to do my Ph.D. at a top-level school anyway.

So would you, yourself, consider this a slam-dunk withdrawal? The only reason I can think of for keeping it is "oh, you should finish what you started" nonsense.

In my opinion, if you don't have a bunch of cancelled courses, and this isn't core to your degree, you can likely cancel and be able to spin it pretty easily if asked by your prospective supervisor. If you don't have a bunch it is easy enough to say that this course just wasn't for you. That certainly happens. I think the big issue is when there is a bunch of them.

Originally Posted by pdel21

In my opinion, if you don't have a bunch of cancelled courses, and this isn't core to your degree, you can likely cancel and be able to spin it pretty easily if asked by your prospective supervisor. If you don't have a bunch it is easy enough to say that this course just wasn't for you. That certainly happens. I think the big issue is when there is a bunch of them.

Well, like I said, this would only be my 2nd withdrawal, and I'm going to retake the previously withdrawn class this winter. And I can definitely say "I didn't have the math required to do well in it", though in reality I'm not enough of a pussywimp to drop a class just because of that.

Also, there are maybe other unique things in my student resume that grad committees might consider more important: I worked in a real profession for 15 years (good), and I'm in my 40s (bad).

It seems I'm slowly making my decision whether to drop the class, so all advice here is helping.

1. This class is guaranteed to bring down my average;
2. It's not a core course (and I don't even need the credit, I'm a second degree student);
3. I did want to learn the material (mathematical modeling), but I will still be able to read what he posts on the course website and I have the software on my computer already if I want to keep learning it on my own;
4. the classroom is a smelly unventilated oven and dropping the class frees up 8 hours in my schedule;
5. it's not like I'm going to do my Ph.D. at a top-level school anyway.

If you don't need the course, don't take it. If you go to grad school and you need to know a topic, you will be asked to take a course (or audit it) by your supervisor.

Withdrawing from a class completely matters on your potential supervisor. Some will see it as people avoiding difficult classes and other will not care. It most definitely matters when applying to professional schools as they won't be melded into your average but they will be brought to the attention of the selection committee. At that point you aren't there to 'explain it away'.

A bit off topic but they also look to see if you took a bunch of service courses to bump up your average. With the grades inflated as they are all averages are not created equally and selections committee know it.

What do you mean when you say "service course", btw? I've just not heard the term.

Pretty much any class that has 600 people and no real assignments or pre-reqs. Think Natural Disasters.