Fall 2020 Pass/Fail Information
The Faculty Senate met on November 18th and recommended that the deadline for selecting the Pass/Fail grading option be extended to the last day of the Fall 2020 semester (Tuesday, December 8, 2020) due to the continued disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Chancellor Preble has accepted this recommendation.
Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with our Pass/Fail policy and its key components to determine if it is both applicable and helpful to you this semester:
Pass/Fail Option
- The Pass/Fail option is not available to Undergraduate Freshmen, Graduate or Law students.
- Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors may select a Pass/Fail Option for one course per semester for up to a maximum of four courses (excluding all Spring 2020 P/NC graded courses), except in the following cases:
- any course specified as a degree requirement;
- any course in a student’s major, unless the department rules otherwise;
- any course used to satisfy General Education or University Studies requirements or the distribution requirements of the degree program in which the student is enrolled.
- Any doubt about whether a course is ineligible for Pass/Fail shall be resolved by consulting with the dean of the college in which the student is enrolled.
- A student who does passing work (i.e., A through D-) in a course shall be given a grade of P (Pass). Passing a course shall earn a student graduation credits but shall not be counted in the cumulative average. Failure in a course will be 0 quality points and will be counted in the GPA.
- After December 8th, the Pass/Fail selection is irrevocable. The Registrar shall be required to keep a separate record of the grade obtained in the Pass/Fail course and will issue this record only on the request of the student. The transcript will contain the Pass/Fail grading notation.
To reiterate, students may only select the Pass/Fail option for courses that do not conflict with the above stated restrictions - courses used to fulfill program/major requirements, college distribution requirements, and university studies requirements are typically ineligible for Pass/Fail. Selecting a course for Pass/Fail may also impact your financial aid/scholarship eligibility, and the ability to graduate or make academic progress, as they are not used in GPA calculations.
The responsibility for selecting appropriate courses for Pass/Fail rests on the student, so if you are uncertain as to whether a course is eligible, I strongly encourage you to contact your academic or college adviser before making the choice. Once you are certain, you can make the choice on COIN by following the process described here (insert link to website). This choice may also have implications for your eligibility for financial aid. To avoid making a choice you may regret later, please consult with your Financial Aid counselor.
At this point in the semester our options are limited. It is our hope that extending the Pass/Fail deadline, together with the extension of the course withdrawal deadline announced last week, will provide some additional flexibility for our students contending with the many challenges they face this semester. Please refer to the Job Aide on how to request a P/F grade: Fall 2020 Pass Fail Select and Revoke Job Aid