Schools Questions on Undergraduate GPA for Math Graduate School

[strlen]

Alright, a little background on me first; i attended a nationally accredited college and due to various circumstances, fell into major depression. I wasted about ~3 years of my life doing very little and ended up dropping/failing many of my classes for extremely stupid reasons (not showing up for the final). My GPA before i decided to switch out to a community college was ~2.30. It's been about a year and a half since i transferred and I've been doing well in all my classes so far. I've been thinking about the future and I'm strongly considering one in graduate school for math.

Okay, with that out of the way here are my questions:

1. The college i originally enrolled in was nationally accredited and as such, none of the credits that i earned there transferred over to my community college; I essentially started over from scratch. Will those classes still count towards my undergraduate GPA?

2. I ended up repeating failed courses in my old college, sometimes passing them, sometimes failing them again. When calculating GPA, are these classes treated as a single entity or multiple ones? In other words, let's say i get an F, F, B in the same class. Will it be counted as just that, an F, F, B or will the B replace those two F's? (I'm guessing not :)

3. How big of a deal are W's? I've accumulated 12, all from my previous college.

4. I've been using this calculator to calculate my GPA, adjusted for my schools. Can anyone tell me if it looks accurate or point me towards a better one?

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=590424"

5. I'm confident that i can get above a 3.0 (aiming for 3.2+) if my previous coursework is taken into account. Assuming worst case scenario and this doesn't happen, what else can i do? Would doing well in an M.S. Math program help? Any other general suggestions?

Sorry for the long post, I appreciate any help :D

 

[Dougggggg]

The fact that you have shown improvement should really help graduate schools see potential in you as a student. Also retaking a course, if I not mistaken, by most schools negates the previous grade on your final GPA. Example, if you take a class and make a C, then retake that class, the higher grade is reflected on your overall GPA. The old grade will still be seen on your transcript but it will not count towards your overall GPA. So if you took classes and did poorly at that first school, when you retook them and do better, your GPA will improve.

 

[strlen]

Yeah, I've heard of that before but haven't been able to find a solid yes or no on whether it's true. And honestly, it's the first and second question that I'm really curious about. If the coursework from my previous college is excluded, the difference in my GPA is like night and day. But i have no idea if the accreditation and/or the fact that nothing transferred over will allow this to happen or not.

I'm also starting to get the feeling that different graduate schools will calculate your GPA differently, really surprised that the whole process is not more transparent. Would e-mailing some arbitrary university's graduate admissions help?