You may have seen the Provost's email regarding the new retake policy at Stony Brook University which  states that "...only the highest grade earned from each retaken course will be calculated into the student’s GPA."  Our students who are pursuing doctoral programs in pre-health (e.g, pre-med, pre-dentisry, pre-optometry, pre-veterinary, etc.)  & allied health programs (e.g., PA, OT, PT, etc.) should remember that application services for schools in the health professions require that applicants enter exactly all of the course and grade information listed on their transcripts. Further, application services (such as pre-med and pre-dentistry) includes the calculation of every course grade, including retakes.  For example: The AMCAS program counts grades for all attempts of a repeated course, even if your school does not. 

 

In a nutshell, applicants are still responsible for faithfully entering all of the grades on their Stony Brook transcript into the relevant application documents even though Stony Brook's new retake policy specifies that only the highest grade of all attempts at the course will count towards the Stony Brook GPA.

For more details, please consult the application instructions for the professions and graduate programs that interest you.  We also encourage you to meet with your advisor to talk about your pre-health strengths and concerns as there may be a variety of ways to strengthen your application other than considering re-taking one or more courses.