Think about it like this
You are admission officer to a grad program
Three kids applications walk in...idk if you've seen official transcripts, but it does show a "W" on your transcripts and the ones law school accepts show all the classes you've taken, dropped or not, it's called an "adjusted gpa."
You're looking, one kid has a 3.4, but a transcript full of Ws
another kid has a 2.9 but no Ws
W means you quit, it got hard so you quit, whether that was because of life or because of academic performance, both students should be assumed to have equal reasoning for dropping a class, one student didn't but the other student did ( we really don't need to go into how terrible life was for me in undergrad, yet I still stuck it out with all my classes).
So, all things being equal, after the last couple of years of students consistently dropping courses, thus inflating their GPAs becasue they just drop all the bad grades as they went along. This means, their GPA is a false representation of their academic performance, so when looking at applications, GPA isn't going to be as highly considered as it once was.
Taking the D means you are a man of higher character (on paper), one that faces ones mistakes instead of hiding them, which, at least on paper, character is a factor in admissions. There is no way to predict what a student would do when they are in school, or, the ultimate goal of schools, when they are an alumni in the world, but, if you are consistently quitting on things in undergrad, for whatever reason, then it doesn't reflect positively on your application.
If you have a bad gpa, or know you will have one, get a great LSAT/GRE score, get some work experience in a similar field and get the best recommendations from the highest authority you can find.
Like I said, I only know law school and what rationale they use in their admission programs, other programs may be different, but law schools don't look to kindly on Ws, despite what all of you PEERS say.
I'm trying to help, as always, dropping a class is not always the best look, in 2014, when everyone has a degree and students can drop their way to a better GPA, schools consider other factors, one of them being character, the ability to handle adversity.
Long story short, drop whatever classes you want, don't make me no nevermind. I'm only here to give advice on the journey I've went through and the experience I've gained, I'm going to be good, this is more for anyone else out there tripping because they have a bad GPA.
