2017-2018 Catalog

How Courses are Counted

The following outlines how certain courses and grades affect the SAP requirements listed above.

Attempted Courses:

  • Attempted courses are those for which you are officially enrolled after the last date to drop courses.
  • All attempted courses count toward the maximum time-frame
  • All courses count in calculating a student's academic progress, including any for which the student did not receive financial aid.
  • Audited courses do not count in the calculation of attempted courses as no units are earned
  • Courses taken on a credit/no credit basis count toward the total number of attempted courses
  • Course credit by examination is counted as an attempted course

Incompletes:

  • Credit for incomplete courses will not count as an attempted course until the course has been completed or the Occidental College Registrar has posted a grade
Withdrawals:
  • Withdrawals showing W on your academic transcript are counted as attempted courses
Repeated courses:
  • If a student does not receive a passing grade for a course and chooses to repeat the course, the course may be repeated for credit. Both the original course and the repeated course will be considered as attempted for the purposes of determining SAP.
  • If a student receives a passing grade for a course and chooses to repeat the course, the repeated course does not count as a course completed and does not contribute to maintaining SAP. The units for the repeated course are not counted, unless the repeated course is identified as "repeatable" in the Course Catalog
  • Repeating a course does not remove the original course form the academic transcript
  • Both the grade for the original course and the repeated course will be posted and will calculate into the student's GPA.
Transfer credits:


  • Transfer credits from another institution accepted by Occidental College are counts when measuring the maximum time-frame to complete the degree. 
  • Occidental does not accept for credit any transfer grades lower than 2.0. Consult the Occidental College transfer policy for more information on how transfer credits are evaluated.