<p>I heard you can take all of your courses at Brown pass/fail.
Does this mean then that there are no GPAs?
Is there any incentive to NOT take every course pass/fail?</p>
<p>Does NOT taking it pass/fail can count toward
a GPA, while a high GPA is a plus for later activites after Brown?</p>
<p>There is no GPA at Brown.</p>
<p>See the note that is attached to all transcripts that Brown sends out: <a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/documents/GPA_Statement.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/documents/GPA_Statement.pdf</a></p>
<p>That's pretty misleading.</p>
<p>You CAN take any class pass/fail (or as we call it, Satisfactory/No Credit aka S/NC). That means that, in theory, you could take ALL your classes S/NC. However, most people only take a few classes S/NC (usually no more than one per semester, and usually people take all their classes within their major for a grade). Especially for applying to grad school / med school / law school etc, it's smart to take most of your classes for grades.</p>
<p>But, since anybody can take any class S/NC, it doesn't make sense to rank students by GPA, so we don't have a valedictorian, etc.</p>
<p>Is it true that grad schools view a "pass" as a C grade?</p>
<p>well i mean they probably dont automatically assume it's a C, but as far as they know, it is one. That's why unless you're maybe taking 5 classes, or it's something totally random, you're better off taking it for a grade.</p>
<p>Well, misleading isn't the word. I didn't say "take all your classes S/NC."</p>
<p>Graduate, Law, and Medical schools will calculate a GPA for you, and will not include classes taken S/NC at all. </p>
<p>For graduate school, it is probably not as important to take non-concentration classes for a grade.</p>
<p>Oops, sorry mgcsinc. I didn't mean to say that anything you said was misleading. I was refering to the original post (that you could take all your classes pass/fail). Sorry for the confusion!</p>
<p>No prob! .</p>
<p>S/NC rocks my world! Especially since I'm interested in some things that I'm not particularly good at, but want to know more about anyway.</p>
<p>Wait, so even if you decide to take ALL your classes with grade…do you still not get a gpa? How do employers determine how to judge you when hiring you?</p>
<p>Anyone can calculate a GPA. There are standard formulas. The fact that Brown doesn’t have +/- designations may throw things off a little, but not it’s not a significant difference. Many students calculate their own and put it on their CV’s. Graduate schools, medical schools, etc. will do it, too.</p>
<p>Re: S/NC vs. gradesthere is no harm in taking things S/NC. All the cases above are perfectly legitimate reasons to take a class S/NC. If you’re heavily involved in volunteer work or have a job or internship or something else extremely time-consuming, then you should also consider taking stuff S/NC.</p>
<p>The only person I know who takes everything S/NC is a PLME student who will stay at Brown through med school and therefore never needs to produce a college GPA.</p>
<p>When you register for a class, you select S/NC or A/B/C/NC. You have the first four weeks of the semester to change your mind. Unfortunately, professors often haven’t graded (or even given) many assignments by that point, so you may not know how you’re doing.</p>
<p>Students can drop classes up through reading period at the end of the semester, and people will do this. Brown doesn’t <em>recommend</em> that you drop classes, per se (especially if you’ve spent a good part of the semester in the class), but it won’t look down on you.</p>
<p>You have two weeks (through the end of shopping period, whenever it ends) to add classes. The exception is switching sections/levels of a course. For example, a number of students dropped down from Math 35 to Math 18 or Math 20 in the middle of the semester. The same may go for language sections. In general, it’s easier to drop down than move up, but whatever you do, proceed with caution because there will be work to catch up on.</p>
<p>I believe it appears on your internal transcript, which you and the administration can view, but not on anything sent to the great beyond (i.e. grad school, employers, anyone else who needs to see your transcript).</p>
<p>And many employers don’t ask for your gpa so that doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>I believe dropped classes don’t even appear on your internal transcript.</p>
<p>^Naw, my dropped class definitely does. But it’s not a big deal: it just says Dropped or something like that. And no one sees internal transcripts anyways, they’re closer to a personal memory jogger than anything else.</p>
<p>I think it says “Dropped” only if you dropped it after a certain date, though.</p>
<p>True: anything within 2 weeks doesn’t affect anything, even the internal transcript. I started with 5 classes, then forgot to drop my egyptology class until a couple more weeks into school. Only ever went to one class, though.</p>
<p>^sort of. You have to have some sort of concentration (meaning a minimum of 8 courses, depending on your concentration), and most people get departmental concentrations, meaning there’s a set of prescribed courses. So, for history, you must take 10 courses, 8 within the history department, which includes no more than 2 intro courses, and a minimum of 2 pre-modern courses, 2 modern courses, and you have to have some “theme” which most of your history, and non-departmental courses cover. Meaning, even if you only took the minimum of 30 courses, you’d still have 20 non-concentration courses to take in whatever you want. But, you could also choose to create your own concentration, in which you take a minimum of 10 courses that either answer a topic (one I heard of had to do with culture and food), which isn’t offered as an established concentration. But most things you’d be interested in are already offered in some form or another (hence why so few people do independent concentrations).</p>
<p>There are no distribution requirements. Look through this thread for a very complete explanation:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/385841-brown-curriculum-university-college-explained.html?highlight=brown+open+curriculum+explained[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/385841-brown-curriculum-university-college-explained.html?highlight=brown+open+curriculum+explained</a></p>