Elizabeth Mendoza 
UTRGV – On April 3, UTRGV President Guy Bailey sent out an announcement regarding the pass/fail system, or as the university is calling it, the pass/no pass: a grading structure available to students enrolled in the spring 2020 semester.
By May 13, students will be allowed to keep the letter grade earned or choose the pass/no pass option, which will have no effect on GPA.
Students like Aiesha Velasquez are finding this system very helpful, especially in unexpected times like these–where she feels students are most vulnerable .
“I do feel like it affects others who are not privileged enough to have certain accesses whether that be to like WiFi, any kind of laptop, even food. I feel like it’s just the conditions we’re living in now. I think that sets it up to whether or not it will affect you…no one person can decide what situation is worse for a student or not,” said Velasquez.
We spoke to the University’s Registrar, Sofia Montes to find out more about some of the questions students had regarding the system.
“Ultimately a student that earns an A or B or C, all of them if they choose to go pass/no pass, would all get a pass. There’s no distinction between them. However, if a student gets an A and wants to keep the A, because those four points will have a positive impact on the GPA, they’ll be able to do that,” Montes explained.
Montes says that grade letters of D and F would be calculated as a no pass, which means it will not affect the GPA, but will count as hours attempted for the degree instead of hours earned.
If a student were to choose the pass/no pass option for all their courses, the GPA would remain the same as the beginning of the fall semester.
The students who opt for this route would also not qualify to be on the President’s or Dean’s List, but there is an exception.
“If for example a student is taking 12 hours and they choose to take 6 of them as pass/no pass and 6 hours of traditional grades and they happen to get A’s in those 2 classes that they’re keeping, and therefore have 4.0 GPA, that would be sufficient to get onto the President’s List,” she continued.
Montes also adds that a student’s GPA will continue to be monitored for the Satisfactory Academic Progress or SAP in order to maintain eligibility for financial aid. If students fall under poor satisfactory requirements, they will be notified by the Financial Aid Office to consider an appeal to continue receiving aid.
For more information on Grading, click on this link:
https://www.utrgv.edu/ucentral/grades-and-transcripts/grading/index.htm
Click on the video below to watch the full story.
