<p>My son just went through orientation. He signed up for a language and wanted to do pass/fail. He was however advised that graduate school doesn't like to see this. He is planning to pursue either an MD or a PhD in Chemistry and my question is why would graduate school care, when many students and schools don't have language requirement. The graduate school or MD programs I thought were more interested in GPA, strength of courses and standardized test scores. Any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance for your comments.</p>
<p>I cannot attempt to give advice as an expert in graduate school adcoms (I’m just a lowly undergrad Econ major) but I can say that through LSA, the fourth term of whichever language your son chooses to take cannot be taken pass fail. Previous semesters can but to finish the language requirement, a letter grade must be accepted on part of the student. </p>
<p>Depending on what language he is interested in taking, I would personally advise taking pass/fail if it is a language he has no background in but strong interest. Pass/fail is used to incentivize students to explore interests without the added pressure of tanking a gpa because a student had little to no experience in the field. </p>
<p>But I’d be more comfortable in my recommendation if someone with experience of grad school/premed could back this up…</p>
<p>I’ve heard before that some grad school admissions offices will automatically consider a grade of pass as a C, but that’s just hearsay. I don’t think medical schools will care much, since AMCAS won’t include the class in GPA calculations anyway. It may be worthwhile for your son to ask an adviser in Chemistry (Nolta is awesome) or a pre-health adviser at Newnan (Brawn and Zitek have been there a long time) to check.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine one or two P/F classes in a degree would matter too much, but one or two per year might imply laziness to some extent.</p>
<p>I would suggest they just take the languages for a grade. Someone planning to go so far in Chem can definitely handle 16 credits of a language, and if anything would probably help GPA padding. LSA languages aren’t too hard (I did RC (pass/fail) and for being deemed a more intensive program, my 3 years of High School french got me through with only minimal studying. </p>
<p>If your son is looking just to finish the requirement I would have him continue the same language in high school, but even starting a new one shouldn’t be too hard.</p>
<p>I was told by admissions representatives at top law schools that a pass/fail or two in courses outside the major weren’t going to be a big deal as long as there wasn’t a pattern of taking major courses as pass/fail, but that’s the only research I’ve done on the matter. In my case, I was wanting to take foreign language pass/fail too, and I did end up doing it.</p>
<p>I am wondering who advised him not to do it, since my advisers gave me the opposite advice. I have been told by foreign language professors at Umich that they discourage it and wish it wasn’t allowed, because then students take the earlier classes pass/fail and don’t study, and then bomb the last semester because that one must be taken for a grade and coasting through previous semesters left them unprepared. I wonder if that’s really more what your S’s adviser is thinking, but that’s just speculation.</p>