Premedical Advising: Should I retake a course?

With a "C," if you understand the terminology and concepts, you're usually better off moving forward, and earning A's in more advanced courses.

With a "D" or an "F," if you still plan to apply to competitive graduate professional programs, it's usually best to retake, and work hard to earn an "A."

You can find KU's internal course repeat policy at 2.2.9 in https://documents.ku.edu/policies/governance/USRR.htm#art2sect2.

If you initially earned a "D" or an "F" in a KU lower-level course (000-299), and meet all of the other conditions in the policy, the grade from retaking the course at KU will replace the earlier grade in figuring your KU GPA. The original course and grade will, however, still appear on your transcript, and will be reported in your application to professional programs.

Different professional schools and application services use their own policies for figuring applicant GPA's!

For example, the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) does NOT allow grade replacement. All college grades are included in figuring GPA, math & science GPA, etc. The American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine Application Service (AACOMAS) does practice grade replacement, using the grade from the latest class. In general, receiving application services and graduate professional programs follow their own rules to calculate a GPA, regardless of the policies used to figure your GPA at KU or other colleges or universities. So, if you're thinking about retaking a course to improve your application GPA, it's important to check with professional school admissions offices to see how this action will be received.

Admissions decisions are made by people, not just numbers. So, even if a school or application service doesn't practice grade replacement, re-taking a course can help answer the question raised by an initially weak performance.

If you get a "D" or an "F" in a course at KU, retaking at a community college does more to confirm the problem, than to address the issue.

Because retaking is easier than taking a class for the first time, there is an expectation that you should do significantly better, i.e., you shouldn't retake a class unless you'll improve your performance by at least two letter grades.

Even if one retakes and does better, a pattern of retaking a lot of courses is still a serious obstacle to admission.