Repeating a Course

Undergraduate

Undergraduate students may repeat a maximum of 16 units at Cal Poly for purposes of improving GPA. A course taken at Cal Poly or at another university or college may be repeated at Cal Poly with the new grade reported along with the prior grade. If the second grade is equal to or higher than the first, then the grade earned by repeating the course will replace the quality points, quality hours, and earned hours which were previously earned. The original grade is "forgiven" from the GPA computation, but both grades appear on the student's permanent record (transcript). Effective Summer 2007, any course is eligible for grade forgiveness one time only. Repeated attempts will be averaged in the student's GPA up to 18 units. If a course is taken with credit/no credit grading, the original grade will not be excluded from the GPA. A student can no longer repeat a course in which a C or higher grade is earned.

With the exception of the reasons listed below, the repeat adjustment is made automatically at the end of the term in which the course is repeated.

A Repeat Petition for Grade Forgiveness is required for the following reasons only:

• the course was originally taken at Cal Poly before Fall 1987
• the course was originally taken at another institution
• the course has changed prefix or number
• the courses are considered similar in content but are not identical (e.g., STAT 217/STAT 218)
• the same topic of a topics course is being repeated

If any of the above exceptions exist, a Repeat Petition for grade Forgiveness is required and must be submitted to the Office of the Registrar by the seventh week of the term in which you are repeating the course. If more than 16 units are repeated, the two grades will be averaged.

Course Repeats with Grade Forgiveness

Undergraduate students may repeat a maximum of 16 units at Cal Poly for purposes of improving their GPA. If the second grade is equal to or higher than the first, then it replaces the first grade. The original grade is "forgiven" from the GPA computation, but both grades appear on the student's transcript. Effective Summer 2007, any course is eligible for grade forgiveness one time only. Consecutive attempts beyond the second attempt are averaged into the GPA along with the second attempt while the grade from the first attempt remains forgiven.

Course Repeats with Grade Averaged

Students may repeat an additional 18 units in addition to the 16 units for which the grade forgiveness is permitted. Once the 16 unit forgiveness limit is reached, the grade from the repeat attempt shall not replace the original grade; instead both grades shall be calculated into the overall GPA.

Once students accumulate 34 units (16 units with forgiveness + 18 units with averaging) of repeated courses, they will no longer be allowed to repeat any future courses.

Repeat a course Information from the Catalog

Graduate

Students may enroll in a course for credit more than once only if the catalog course description states that the course may be repeated for credit. An exception to this policy allows repeating of a course in cases where a grade of D or F was received. However, for graduate students both grades will be reflected in the calculation of the grade point average. Graduate students are not eligible to repeat courses and remove the lower grade points from calculation of the GPA.