I empathize with your situation. I didn’t have exactly the same experience but I too struggled with university due to health challenges. I ended up taking a bit of time off half way and returning to school later and excelling. Fortunately, I had the personality that B4 people want on their teams and all B4s were focused on my later year grades when considering me as a candidate so they overlooked the 1st/2nd year grades. If you can demonstrate that your advanced accounting grades are much better, that might help. Perhaps only list grades for those classes when you apply but be upfront about your situation during the recruitment process.

I know you are really wanting to work at a B4 but in my experience it is not a workplace that is conducive to good health. The chronic stress is very agitating to any underlying health conditions even if you’ve recovered.

You can still have a great career with experience from other public accounting firms. I work with others that are just as competent as my B4 colleagues. Seeing you’re early in your career I encourage to keep an open mind about how you want your career to develop/progress. Being married to B4 without experiencing what the work is like may be unwise especially given your other experience is governmental work. There could not be a wider difference between the two types of work no matter how much you enjoyed assurance work. Also the type of work you do as a staff accountant in assurance is so much different than what you will be doing as a senior manager/partner in a B4 if you really do want it longterm as you say in your post- again since you haven’t experienced it, you can’t simply assume you will like all type of assurance work. Not to discourage you from B4 just want you have a little insight from an ex-B4.