At the very beginning of my academic career, I took A&P and got a D. Horrifying, I know. It’s been about 6 years now, and I want to retake it. Realistically, will this still be a big ding on my record, or will med schools look at my most recent scores? Can you retake science courses if you don’t do well on them, and want to do better, or is that looked down on?
Thank you muchas! 
Hi, Sandy. It won’t serve you well for me to tell you that it won’t matter, because it will. But here’s the up side. This grade will be part of your larger GPA and GPA breakdown. Will they notice it? Probably. If you’ve done very well since then, will it keep you out of interviews? Doubtfully.
There are a couple of scenarios I can see to repeat the course. Remember that for DO schools, the higher grade goes in for the GPA calculations. Therefore you can replace the D. Even in MD applications, your new grade will be averaged with the old grade. If you strongly believe that you will perform significantly better and you want a leg up (VERY bad pun!) as you enter medical school, I think it’s worth considering retaking the course. However, I would not retake if you expect to only do moderately better as this may make them believe it was less of a “fluke” that you received the first D.
If you are retaking other classes or doing any part of a post-bacc/pre-reqs, that will appear a separate line item on your AMCAS application. Thus it could be beneficial. But, it depends on your overall situation strategy
Hmm, so it sounds like it’s situationally dependent. I do plan on retaking it, because I was in a bad place emotionally when I took it last time. Since then, I’ve gotten an EMT cert and done another bio class, so I feel like I could definitely do better. It’s good to know that MD schools average your scores! Thank you both for your input. 
Yikes I have several “dings” on my record. Lets just say this is my 4th time taking Calc and it will be my 3rd taking physics. Not to mention my 2nd attempt at Orgo…shall I go on? At this point i WISH i only had one D.
I think i probably have the most dinged record out of anyone on this forum. I can attribute it, however, to a family illness that really put a damper on everyone psychologically. (Yes, I will explain that in my personal statement)
Cut to 4 years later, I am retaking most of them and while I KNOW that i’ll never be able to hide those poor grades, or hope that the adcoms “skip over them” , I need to do significantly better this time.
If anyone’s interested, my premed advisor said that it’s trends more than anything else that the med schools look at. She was of the impression that as long as I aced my current science classes, it would be fine, since the D happened so many years ago, when I was a new undergrad.
I took almost all of the premed courses 5 years ago, but mostly my grades were 4 B’s, 2 C’s, and 1 A.
I am retaking them all again (starting in a few weeks) because I don’t remember a lick of what I learned back then. I work in the IT industry, so i never needed that knowledge again.
Also I was a crammer back in college, so I forget everything a few hours after a test. I know it looks better to just take higher level courses to show adcoms you can improve, but I’m not sure how well i would do not knowing the basics, and the MCATs is all about the basics as well (from what I understand).
Also I am planning on going the DO route mostly. I only plan on applying to MD schools which my postbac offers linkages too, and the Caribbean.
I don’t want to advice anyone whether they should retake courses or not; I personally feel I will crash and burn if I attempt to take higher level courses and MCATs without thoroughly knowing the beginner stuff. It may be a longer road, and I know some may argue I don’t have to do it this way, but I feel I will benefit from this…especially for the MCATS heh.