Improving GPA

[roo]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently an undergrad student at Queens hoping to apply to OVC, however unfortunately I did really poorly in my Statistics course. To my understanding of the OVC rules, I am not allowed to submit a repeat of the course (if I'm trying to improve the mark), or do any courses that overlap the same material. Does anyone understand why this rule is in place?

I've read and heard from other students who say that they did extra semesters and/or years of schooling to try to improve their applications after being rejected - most likely because they didn't have a high enough GPA. I don't quite understand how to improve my application if I'm only allowed to attempt the prerequisite courses once and GPA accounts for a large percentage of how I will be evaluated.

Also, taking a different statistics course does not seem to be an option for me since my program is limited in its course offerings.

If anyone can provide some guidance or clarification on this topic, that would be greatly appreciated.

[turtle]

The rule is in place bc if students do poorly on a course and then repeat it and do well, they could have an advantage over students taking it for the 1st time bc they've seen the material before.

It's pretty common for Guelph students to do poorly on the intro stats class (stat2040), and then take the second course (stat2050) to improve their application GPA. Usually there are multiple courses that will fulfill the prerequisite requirement (for example, biochem101 and biochem102), and you pick and choose which courses you want to apply with to maximize your application average.

If you've got all your prereqs done, you could calculate your application average and see where you're at. Honestly, 1 bad mark won't sink your application. If you need to improve your average and you can't take another stats course, are there other courses you can take instead?

[lowenger]

You can take a virtual course at another university too

[tilac]

I agree with what everyone else has suggested so far, one other thing to consider is that your prereqs for OVC need to be taken during full-time semesters, i.e. you can't take your second stats course during summer unless you take enough courses at that time to be considered a full-time student. Also, 60% of the courses must be at your year-level (i.e. if you were in 2nd year, then 60% of your courses should be 2nd year or higher, although in 4th year or beyond you still need to have 60% 3rd year or above courses).
If you can't take another statistics course as an elective and this mark really sinks your application, then I would suggest trying to do an extra non-degree semester (not sure what Queen's policy is on this) after you finish your degree, then take enough courses to be full time with stats as one of them - you could also use this semester to upgrade any other prereqs if needed. Online courses will work as well, but you'll also have to double-check that there isn't content overlap and it occurs in a full-time, 60% year-level semester for it to count. Although not ideal, you could also consider switching your major or picking up a minor that would make you eligible or have more availability for more stats courses - if your ultimate goal is to get into OVC your actual undergrad program probably isn't important so long as you satisfy the application requirements.
Ultimately, if stats is your only bad mark then you might still be alright, and you could just keep these ideas as backup options if your application(s) after 3rd/4th year are not successful at getting you an interview.
Hope this helps!

[undergradstats]

Hi,
I'm familiar with Queen's and their stats courses. I'm assuming you took the general stats course at the 2nd year level that most students do. If you have electives left in your program and you are really concerned about this mark, I would suggest looking into a third year math course called game theory (I don't remember the course code anymore). You would need to get it approved by OVC first, but it was a great class for non-math majors (or someone that had only taken first year calc)! It is about statistics and probability, so would definitely count towards a stats prereq, and doesn't overlap with the 2nd year general stats course. Just something I thought you might want to look into!

[roo]

Thanks everyone for the feedback/responses!

Just as another clarification question on the rules: "Repeating a course or taking a course with significant content overlap may result in the entire semester being deemed inadmissible."

Let's say (for simplicity) that I took the same statistics course twice in first year semesters, and then I also took a different upper year statistics course later in 2nd year.

If I'm only submitting the upper year statistics course as the statistics prerequisite, will that second attempt during my first year invalidate other non-statistics courses from the same semester that I may want to submit to fulfill other prerequisites?

[lowenger]

The semester in which you repeated the course would be not considered full time since that course was a repeat. So no other courses in that semester would be usable as prerequisites.