Request for Ungraded Option

College Policy

Each undergraduate student may elect to take a total of four courses (or 16 credits) on an ungraded basis under the following conditions:

  • The election for MHC courses must be recorded in the Registrar’s Office no later than the fiftieth academic day of classes. No changes in the option may be made after that date.
    • Students taking Five College courses must follow the procedures & deadline of the school offering the course to elect the equivalent of the Ungraded Option at those schools. These deadlines are usually much earlier than Mount Holyoke’s, and the option may not be available in some courses. Also the standards for qualifying for a passing grade may be different.
  • The Ungraded Option cannot be elected in any course applying to the student’s declared major nor within the student’s major department (even if the course is not actually needed to fulfill a requirement of the major). In the case of crosslisted courses, these prohibitions apply, even if the student is not registered within the major department but instead is registered in the crosslisting.
    • For students who have declared majors that are either interdisciplinary or self-designed (special majors), the principle of the requirement still applies. You cannot elect the Ungraded option in any course in the fields that are the principal strands of your interdisciplinary major...even if you don’t need the course to fulfill a special requirement for your major.
  • Any course for which the Ungraded Option is elected (or equivalent pass/fail etc., at one of the other Five College Institutions) may not be used for distribution credit, to fulfill the language requirement, to fulfill the Multicultural Perspectives requirement, or to fulfill the requirements of a student’s minor.
  • If passed, a first-year seminar in which the Ungraded option was elected may, however, be used to satisfy the First-Year Seminar requirement.
  • No more than one course may be elected on an ungraded basis per semester.
  • The instructor’s class list will not indicate who has elected the ungraded option.
  • An ungraded course shall not be counted in the cumulative average, whether or not the student receives credit. CR (Credit) shall be recorded for a course taken under the ungraded option in which a student receives a grade of A through D-. If a student does not receive credit for an ungraded course, NC (No Credit) will appear on the transcript.
  • Exception: Courses graded on a pass/fail basis only (i.e. MHC or Five College courses graded on a mandatory pass/fail or Credit/No Credit basis only with no option of letter grading) shall not be counted in the quota.

If you change your mind regarding the use of the ungraded option, and the deadline to elect the Ungraded Option has not yet passed, please send an email to the registrar requesting that we rescind your original request.