Daniel Cucher

Fail calculus? Get a D in accounting? Blow off the second half of your semester in English literature? No problem. Just GRO it. But don't bet on your prospective graduate school to be as forgiving as UA's grading policy.

The UA is among only a handful of schools that allow students to replace a certain number of course grades by retaking classes. While both courses appear on student transcripts, only the repeat attempt is used to calculate the student's grade point average.

Nice deal, huh? You take a course, fail miserably, and then take it again the next semester and file for a Grade Replacement Option. If you do well in the repeat course, you can sit back and watch your GPA skyrocket, while the grade points from your initial attempt magically dissolve into thin air. If you do poorly your second time around, it still counts, but only as a single attempt.

The only way a GRO can hurt you is if you do worse the second time you take a course. But as a general rule, repeat grades are higher than initial ones. It makes a big difference to your GPA.

Consider, for example, a student who takes three courses for nine units, and earns an E, a D and a C. The student then GROs the three courses and earns two Bs and an A. When he graduates with 120 units, his GPA, assuming he usually earns Bs, is 3.02.

However, if repeat courses were averaged together with the original grades (instead of replacing them), his GPA would be (out of 129 units) a considerably lower 2.88. It's amazing how far a few bombed courses go in diminishing a GPA.

As a result of this policy, the UA can boast a significantly higher student body GPA than if repeat courses were averaged in with the first tries. Additionally, more students are encouraged to retake courses that they otherwise might not retake, thereby extending their careers at the university beyond four years.

The GRO incentive obviously serves to encourage students to retake courses, but when it comes to padding GPAs, its benefits are questionable. When students retake courses and achieve higher scores, their university transcripts look a lot more attractive. But to whom?

As far as the Office of Curriculum and Registration is concerned, a student's GPA accounts for GRO adjustments. But to the Medical College, for example, a student's GPA is composed of all college coursework, including unfortunate first attempts. When students apply to medical school, AMCAS (the application service for most American medical colleges) recalculates students' GPAs, disregarding GROs.

The James E. Rogers College of Law employs a similar policy. Applicants are considered for admission based on all coursework, and GPAs are calculated without adjustments for GROs.

The same is true for many graduate programs around the country, including several master's programs in business.

Graduate schools tend to recalculate GRO-inflated GPAs because very few undergraduate colleges give students a grade replacement option. They ignore GRO grade-padding to level the playing field for all applicants.

It's an inarguably fair policy: Why should anyone have an advantage for going to a school that readily forgives poor academic performance when most schools do not?

Students should be warned not to use the grade replacement option as a safety net. Even though certain graduate programs accept the inflated GPAs, admissions committees still scrutinize transcripts and may think twice about students who fail difficult courses before getting them right.

The university GRO policy is available online at the official UA Web site, and students should read it for detailed information not provided in this column. However, students will not find within the policy a warning that GROs may mean nothing to their prospective graduate schools.

Let this be your warning.

Grade replacing is a nice policy in theory, and fairly progressive as well. But until the majority of universities around the country adopt a similar policy, grade-replaced courses may look no different on transcripts than courses that were simply retaken.