Credit/No Credit Policy

A student may take four units over four years, not more than one in any semester, under the Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) option. A student registered for five courses is not permitted a second CR/NC registration. Transfer students may take one CR/NC unit for each year they spend at Bryn Mawr, based on class year at entrance.

A student registered for a course under either the graded or the CR/NC option is considered a regular member of the class and must meet all the academic commitments of the course on schedule. The instructor is not notified of the student’s CR/NC registration because this information should in no way affect the student’s responsibilities in the course.

Faculty members submit numerical grades for all students in their courses. For students registered CR/NC, the Registrar converts numerical grades of 1.0 and above to CR and the grade of 0.0 to NC. Numerical equivalents of CR grades are available to each student from the Registrar, but once the CR/NC option is elected, the grade is converted to its numerical equivalent on the transcript only if the course becomes part of the student’s major.

When a course is taken under the CR/NC option, the grade submitted by the faculty member is not factored into the student’s grade point average. However, that grade is taken into consideration when determining the student’s eligibility for magna cum laude and summa cum laude distinctions.

• Students may not take any courses in their major department under the CR/NC option, but they may use it to take courses towards the Emily Balch Seminar, Quantitative, Quantitative and Mathematical Reasoning, Distribution or Foreign Language Requirements. While all numerical grades of 1.0 or better will be recorded on the transcript as CR, the Registrar will keep a record of whether the course meets the 2.0 minimum needed to count towards a requirement. It is the student’s responsibility to consult the Academic Requirements feature of the student’s Student Center to determine whether a course the student took CR/NC has satisfied a particular requirement.
• A student taking a course that is CR/NC for everyone (for example, Chorale or Orchestra), may still choose to take one course under the ordinary CR/NC option.
• Students wishing to take a semester-long course CR/NC must sign up in Bionic by the end of the sixth week of classes. The deadline for half-semester courses is the end of the third week of the half semester.
• Once the deadline for sign-up has passed, a student may not reverse the decision or otherwise "uncover the grade," except by declaring a major in the department.
• No student is permitted to sign up for CR/NC after these deadlines. Students who wish to sign up for CR/NC for year-long courses in which grades are given at the end of each semester must sign up CR/NC in each semester because CR/NC does not automatically continue into the second semester in those courses.
• Bryn Mawr students are bound by Bryn Mawr CR/NC rules, even when the course being taken CR/NC is at Haverford, Swarthmore, or Penn.
• Haverford students taking Bryn Mawr courses must register for CR/NC at the Haverford Registrar’s Office.

For information regarding the special grading policies put into place for Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021, visit the 2020-2021 policy page.