P/NP Grades (Pass/No Pass)

What P/NP grades mean

P/NP means pass or no pass: you get credit for passing, with no letter grade. At UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara and UC Davis, P and NP grades are left out of the GPA, and Cornell’s S/U grades aren’t averaged either.

What counts as a pass varies. UC Santa Barbara’s P means a C or better, while UC Davis treats a C− or better as a pass. Below that line you get an NP, which at UC Davis earns no units and doesn’t touch your GPA.

How P/NP affects your GPA: an example

Take a 3.20 GPA over 45 credits and a 4-credit course. A P leaves the GPA at 3.20, because the course adds credits earned but no grade points and no GPA credits. A letter C in the same course would give (144 + 8) ÷ 49 = 3.10; an A would give (144 + 16) ÷ 49 = 3.27.

An NP at a school like UC Davis also leaves the GPA at 3.20, with no credits earned. Where a school counts a failed pass/fail course as an F instead, it would give 144 ÷ 49 = 2.94. That’s why it matters which rule applies to you.

Credit and degree requirements

A P earns credit, but schools limit how much and where. UC Berkeley caps pass/no pass credit at one-third of your units. UC Santa Barbara says courses for your major or minor generally must be taken for a letter grade, and Georgia Tech excludes pass/fail courses from the GPA.

Before choosing P/NP, check your major’s rules and your department’s list of courses that must be letter-graded.

How applications treat pass/no pass

Application services follow their own rules. AMCAS leaves pass/fail courses out of its GPA, both passes and fails. LSAC doesn’t convert a P, but counts a grade below C− from a two-grade system if your school counts it in its own GPA.

For freshman admission, the CSU leaves Credit and No Credit grades out of its GPA. A P/NP-heavy transcript can also mean less GPA data for a program to look at, so think about which courses an application will care about.

Should you take a class P/NP?

P/NP makes sense for a course outside your major that you’d struggle to get a high grade in, when your school allows it and it won’t be needed later for a requirement or an application. It protects your GPA if you’d otherwise earn a grade below your average.

It’s riskier for major courses, prerequisites and anything a graduate program will read closely. If you’re between a P/NP and a letter grade, work out both: the College GPA Calculator shows your term with the letter grade, and leaving the course out shows the P.

Frequently asked questions