<p>Does anyone know anything about these?
How do they affect your GPA and class rank, if at all?
Will a college automatically assume the grade was a D? Does it look bad to have one?</p>
<p>Bump. 10 characters.</p>
<p>At our school, all pass/fail credits do not go into your GPA, but they do show up on your transcript. An example would be Gym - if you barely passed Gym with like, a 62, your GPA would not be affected at all - but it appears on your transcript.</p>
<p>I don’t know how bad it looks - I don’t think it looks terrible in all honesty, but it depends on the class. Someone with a 3.9 or a 4.0 GPA that has a D in Gym isn’t exactly a “bad student” by any stretch of the mind.</p>
<p>It’s physics. :(</p>
<p>Physics is pass/fail at your school?</p>
<p>I took the final without taking the class. I got a mediocre grade and I have the option of taking it pass/fail or with the letter grade. So I can either screw up my GPA and class rank, or look suspicious to colleges.</p>
<p>The grade was 92%.
And I’m definitely not saying that’s a bad grade, especially considering I never took the class. But it’s considered a B at my school, so it would lower my GPA and class rank. If I can take it pass/fail with no consequence and still get the credit, I’ll do that.
I know having one or two B’s isn’t bad, but I want to take all college classes next year and it’s highly likely that I won’t get A’s in all of them. So I’d like to have some room to mess up my GPA with those. I just don’t want a “Pass” to make it look like I didn’t try or did really badly.</p>
<p>I’ve never wanted to throw something at someone so badly. </p>
<p>B or not, 92 is awesome, especially if you didn’t take the class. Get over yourself. </p>
<p>The pass/fail makes it look like you want to hide something.</p>
<p>B is not a mediocre grade - get over yourself! Just make a decision. Pass Fail for an academic class might look like you were hiding something, or it might look like you decided to take an “extra” class as a challenge to yourself, and you passed it. Unless it is a required course for one of the schools where you’re applying, it really doesn’t matter. Are you planning to apply somewhere that a slight slip in your class rank is going to make a big difference? Otherwise, think about what you’re all worked up over. </p>
<p>Students constantly have to balance these types of questions. Should my D take Art, and risk getting an “A” worth only 3.8 points? It’s worth less than her honors and AP classes, and will bring her GPA down - but she will be a more well-rounded student. Make a decision and go with it.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone.
I don’t think it’s a bad grade, but I want to present myself as well as I possibly can. I want to be a math major and my top choice for a college right now is Reed, which as far as I know doesn’t have any specific course requirements.
My idea is to have the physics pass/fail and then take an AP or college physics class next year. If I did well there, that would probably indicate I’m good at physics. And my GPA would stay the same, and my class rank wouldn’t go down, and I wouldn’t have to explain to people why I didn’t get straight A’s on my report card.
I was just concerned that pass/fail looks inherently suspicious.</p>
<p>It does.</p>
<p>That was one of my my prime motivators for switching my Brit Lit class from pass/fail (a concept so underused here that the teacher thought I was making it up) to a course for credit. It wasn’t a required class for graduation (as I was already a happy Asian Lit student), but my GC and I mutually perceived it as being a potential excuse, especially around second semester. (Also, the GPA weighting, sweet sweet GPA weighting.)</p>
<p>But in all seriousness, if I was going to do all the work (which was my intention; why take a class if you’re not going to do anything?), I sure as hell wanted a college to see that.</p>