According to my class rosters, I have quite a few repeat students in my class. Here at PermaU, students are allowed to repeat classes and exclude the lower grade on from their GPA. Last semester, I had a repeat student who got a D the first time. They ended up with an F in my class.
Often repeating the class helps tremendously. I had a friend in college, for example, get a D in a course, repeat it for an A, and go on to get his MD/Ph.D. Unfortunately, I do not seem to encounter those types of students. All the repeaters I've had have come in and coasted the first few weeks (the familiar material), and then bomb the remainder of the semester. This results in a C or worse. Is this normal?
Each institution I've been at has had a different repeat policy, and so I'm not sure which is "standard." Here they are:
- repeat once, but only if you got a D or F the first time
- repeat only if you got a D or F the first time and if it is a course in your major
- repeat as many times as you want
- repeat twice
So is the repeat policy really helping students, or is it just inflating the grades of students who should just be put on academic probation any way?
