system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it better to take a W or abandon all hope of graduating summa cum laude?

(US) I'm in my senior year and I plan to move on to graduate school. During a recent discussion of my grade on an early project, the instructor told me outright that students in her class rarely gets As, so I'm tempted to withdraw if the stakes are high enough.

It's an elective class that I could easily replace in the spring term. Does it look better on my grad school applications if I don't have a withdrawal on my record, or that I graduated with highest honors? I currently have a 4.0 GPA and my discipline requires it for the honors degree.
gpt
IMO, the withdrawal looks worse. 

Honors really don't mean a lot in the scheme of graduate admissions, and I'd worry that you withdrew from a course to protect your GPA. 

The people I've seen have the most trouble in grad school are the ones who are too protective of their GPA, hence the W would look worse to me than the (very slightly) lower GPA.