Two Colleges - Two Different GPA Scores

Like many high school graduates, I wasn't all that certain about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still went straight into a local junior college and spent two years taking the basics along with a few computer programming classes. After the first year, I decided that my major was Computer Science and went with it. My grades weren't that great and I finished out at the JC with a 2.2 GPA after retaking a couple of classes that thoroughly kicked my butt.

After my two-year stint at the junior college, it was time to move up to a major university. I signed up for Mississippi State University and was accepted and all seemed well until it came time to sign up for classes via their archaic dial-in system. (This took place in 1996, and they have since upgraded the system.) I had registered for five classes, but it would only let me sign up for four and kept giving an error saying I needed to go visit the Registrar's office.

Long story short, I had been placed on academic probation and nobody at MSU saw fit to tell me. The reason why is because MSU and the junior college calculate GPA's (grade point averages) differently, even though they were both within the same state. While I had a 2.2 at the JC, I only had a 1.9 at MSU. Being less than 2.0 means you automatically enter under academic probation and that limits you to 13 semester hours. I had signed up for 15 hours worth of classes, but had to drop one.

The difference in GPA scores was because I had retaken two different classes at the junior college. While the JC only counts the highest grade, MSU counts both grades. This is not at all fair to the student, but that's just how they do it. If you were to fail a class (0 GPA) and then retake it and got an A (4 GPA) then you would still only average out to a 2.0. It's the same 3-hour class being counted twice.

By making me drop one class, it threw off my schedule in such a way that I didn't have a single class back to back. I'd go to one class for an hour, then come back two hours later for another, then I even had one night class. It was a horrible schedule. Also, some classes are only offered every other semester and my forced limitations made it so that I had to plan a full year ahead to get the right prerequisites out of the way before I could take certain classes required for my degree.

I went to MSU for two years before realizing that it would take me so long to finish the degree that I just transferred my credits to another college (William Carey University) and finished up there. I then stayed on to complete my Master's Degree and made either the Dean's or President's list every semester.