Hi, I finished my first year with a full course load, meaning that I attained 30 units. However, I did poorly on one especially, that brought my cumulative average down a lot to a 5.8 while I need a minimum of 6.0 to get into my second year programs. If I were to retake that course in summerschool, how would that affect my cumulative average if I were to get a better mark than the original?

I know that to calculate your cumulative average, you add up the grade points from all your courses and divide by the total number of units. So does that mean that I would add the mark from the summerschool course to the ten marks from my first year and divide by 33? Or would my summerschool mark replace the original one, so that I just divide by 30?

Thanks for any help on this

p.s. I would really appreciate if someone could tell me who I could contact at McMaster for more information

Hi,

I don't have the answer to your question, but I would suggest contacting your faculty advisor on Monday (I don't think they work on weekends).

I'd give you the direct extension, but I'm not sure what faculty you're in because your profile is set to private.

Hi, thanks for the reply... I was enrolled in Life Science I and I just found out on MUGSI that because I didn't satisfy the minimum 6.0, my only option is to register into the 3-year Life Science program and hopefully mirror the courses for the honours Biology program that I was originally interested in.

I would appreciate it if you could give me the extension number for the faculty advisor or councellor I could speak to about the situation.

Thanks

Yes, you would multiply the mark you obtain in a course by the number of credits that course is worth. Do that for all the courses, add them all up and divide by the total number of credits.

I'm not sure about the extension for the faculty advisor but the extension for student inquiries is 27590. That's for the faculty of science.

Also check out this: http://www.science.mcmaster. ca/main/contacts.html

Okay, so that means that the original mark would weigh the same amount as the summerschool mark.

And that means that unless I get a summerschool grade that's much higher than the original one to balance out the poor one and bring up my cumulative average, I could end up with a lower cumulative average than the one I have now... right?

I don't follow how you could lower your cumulative average by redoing the course... obtaining the same mark should leave your CA unaffected so yeah if you don't obtain a significantly higher mark your CA won't improve by much. I'm pretty sure that they average the two grades when a course is retaken for life science. Definitely check with your associate dean's office though!

I'm pretty sure that MSS12 meant that their cumulative average would be lower if the summer class mark is lower than the mark obtained before.