It should be acceptable to get an F, learn from your mistakes, take the class again, and have that grade go away. Failing a class just shouldn't be a big deal. Students should be able to push the boundaries of what they can do, and sometimes reach their limits. I failed a classes in college, and that experience really taught me a lot about myself, and made me a much better student. The problem is that GPAs expect flawlessness throughout the whole educational process, not just in the end result. So, my great learninge experience significantly hampered my ability to get into a top grad school, making pursuing a master's degree pointless. If overall GPAs and transcripts didn't go beyond the confines of a single school, an F wouldn't be nearly as big a deal, and students would be a lot more willing to take risks, and learn better because of it. If you can demonstrate that by the time you graduated you met the same standard as a 4.0 GPA student you should be considered equally to them for the purposes of grad school admissions and hiring.