Dropped out of college because of health reasons. Trying to restart, but don't want bad grades on transcript.

Question

I went to a university for a few years and then because of health reasons, dropped out. I barley turned anything in the last semester. My GPA at that college is very low. Though I did get most of my basics, am even more motivated now, and would rather just start over as a freshman. I want to apply to a top college (1 tier), and then possibly go on to dental school at an Ivy League College. Is there any way that i could just leave my GPA from my first college off of my application? I'm afraid that I won't be able to get in because of it. Also, if it did have to count, could I just transfer the A's that I made, and retake the rest? What should I do? Thank you!

Answer 1

You can't remove anything from your transcript, but you can overcome it. I had a similar situation as an undergrad, but then went on to get pretty much straight A's when I went back to school later on. I had my references make it clear that my bad grades were not due to anything which was indicative of my future academic performance. You can't expect to get into a first tier college with a lot of poor grades right away,though. Can you retake those courses to fix the GPA you would be going into a university with? Things work out the way they do for a reason, sometimes. I still managed to go on for three graduate degrees from excellent schools (but the undergrad college from which I graduated was lower in quality because it was all I could get into with a slew of D's and F's).