Registrar's Office

Course Repetition

  • Students will be prevented from registering for a course in which a grade of C or higher has been assigned.
  • Undergraduate students are limited to 28 semester units of course repetition through regular enrollment.
  • Courses repeated prior to Fall 2009 that are included in the calculation of the GPA (not forgiven) will not contribute to this limit. However, units of courses taken prior to Fall 2009 that have been "forgiven" will contribute to this 28 semester unit limit.
  • Undergraduate students may attempt to improve their GPA by repeating a course.
  • Only grades of C-, D+, D, D- F, WU or IC may be repeated and forgiven (excluded from GPA calculation).
  • The course can be repeated no more than two times for a maximum of three attempts. The number of repeats of individual courses prior to Fall 2009 will contribute to this 2 repetition (3 attempts) limit.  
  • Withdrawing from a class and receiving a W grade is NOT considered an attempt.  Such attempts will NOT be taken into account when determining how many times a student has taken a course, and in the calculation of the 28 semester unit course repetition limit.
  • Grades received in courses taken through Extended Education in excess of the 28 semester unit limit can be used to satisfy content and prerequisite requirements, but will not be used in GPA calculations. These courses will appear on the student's transcript.
  • Students may request waivers of this policy. A waiver will be granted only to students with a minimum overall GPA of 2.0 and documentation of demonstrated effort. In order to be considered for a waiver, students must submit a Petition to Waive Restriction on Course Repeats with the necessary approval signatures to the Office of Student Success.
  • Courses explicitly designated as repeatable in the University Catalog are not included in this policy. 

For further details to repeating a course, please click the hyperlink: University Catalog – Course Repetition.

Grade Forgiveness

Students may receive Grade Forgiveness through course repetition. When a grade is forgiven due to course repetition, the grade and units for the excluded course work will not be used in the calculation of the grade point average and the units will not be used to satisfy the requirements toward graduation. The excluded course work will remain on the student's permanent record, but will be annotated as excluded from the grade point average through grade forgiveness.

  • Effective Fall 2018, Grade Forgiveness through course repetition is automatically invoked when a student repeats the course if the new grade is better than the original grade. If a student retakes an eligible class in which the student earned a grade of C- or lower, grade forgiveness will automatically apply as long as the student had remaining units. (See note below for Grade Forgiveness prior to Fall 2018.)
  • Grade Forgiveness through course repetition is limited to 16-semester units. These 16 semester units contribute to the 28 semester unit limit for course repetition.*
  • Students may repeat an additional 12 units for grade replacement, meaning the repeat grade will not nullify the original grade, and both grades will be factored into the student GPAs.
  • Units of courses where grade forgiveness has already been applied prior to Fall 2009 will contribute to the 16 semester unit limit.
  • For students who wish to repeat a quarter course under semesters, or a course that has undergone a number change, the Grade Forgiveness through Course Repetition Form should be filed to that effect. Such petitions should be approved as a matter of course, assuming all existing conditions for grade forgiveness apply.
  • Grade Forgiveness can be applied only to courses taken for undergraduate credit and before awarding of a bachelor's degree.
  • Grade forgiveness shall not apply to courses for which the original grade was the result of a finding of academic dishonesty. For advisement purposes, the letter J will be affixed after the grade awarded to the student in the class in question, e.g., D+J for a grade of D+. The suffix J will not appear on official transcripts.
  • A Cal Poly Pomona course may be used to forgive the grade of a course taken at another institution if the two courses are determined to be equivalent by the chair of the department offering the CPP course. Courses taken at other institutions cannot be used to forgive the grade of a course taken at Cal Poly Pomona.
  • A Challenged Course cannot be used as a repetition of a regularly enrolled course. 
  • Students that prefer to use grade forgiveness differently than facilitated by automatic grade forgiveness, a general academic petition may be filed to this effect.
  • Students and advisors will be able to view on BroncoDirect the number of units repeated and forgiven.
  • Effective Fall 2009, the grade forgiveness policy will apply to IC grades.

    *Units earned for a repeated course in Spring 2020 shall be excluded from the 16-semester unit maximum for grade forgiveness.

For course taken prior to Fall 2018, Grade Forgiveness through course repetition will only be automatically applied when:

  • A quarter course forgave the same quarter course
  • A semester course forgives a quarter course that was a 1:1 conversion equivalent in the semester conversion guide
  • A semester course forgives a quarter course that was included as part of a department memo on grade forgiveness for Many: 1 and  1: Many courses.

For courses that are not automatically forgiven student mayseek grade forgiveness by submitting the Grade Forgiveness through Course Repetition Form (PDF) to the Registrar's Office.

Graduate Courses Taken By Undergraduates

An undergraduate may petition for up to nine semester units of graduate coursework taken as an undergraduate student for postbaccalaureate credit providing that:

  1. the courses are at the 3000, 4000, or 5000 level;
  2. none of the courses to be taken for graduate credit is applied to the bachelor's degree;
  3. the student has senior standing (has completed 90 semester units) and an upper-division grade point average of 2.75 or better; some departments may specify a higher GPA;
  4. the petition is submitted before the end of the last week of instruction in the semester in which the work is performed; retroactive credit will not be granted;
  5. the petition is endorsed by the instructor of the course, and approved by the student's undergraduate Department Chair, College Dean, and the Graduate Studies Office.

If the petition is approved, the courses for which such credit is requested will be identified on the transcript as postbaccalaureate coursework as applicable, and grades earned will be considered in the cumulative postbaccalaureate-GPA as applicable.  If no petition is filed, the coursework will be considered undergraduate work.

Petitions for consideration of coursework taken as an undergraduate student will not be considered from students after completion of the undergraduate degree. 

When an undergraduate student takes a graduate course, there will be no differential evaluation procedure.  All students in the class will be considered graduate students and evaluated according to postbaccalaureate standards established by the associated graduate college.

Contact the Graduate Studies Office for further information.