Spring 2020 S/U grading option for UF graduate students

University of Florida
April 6, 2020

Dear Graduate Students,

We appreciate your courage and patience during this difficult time. Over the past few weeks, the Graduate School has been reviewing policies to allow appropriate flexibility given the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic for Spring 2020. The Graduate School and several colleges will implement policy to provide an S/U (satisfactory/unsatisfactory)grading option to eligible, letter-graded graduate courses, as determined by your college and department, for Spring 2020. 

Beginning April 6, 2020, you will have access to an S/U grading request form through your ONE.UF page until April 22, 2020, the last day of classes. Within this April 6-April 22 window of time, you will have the opportunity to shift any of your eligible, letter-graded courses, as determined by your college and department, to S/U grading. Please note, if you elect to stay in the letter grading framework for all your courses that are currently letter-graded, you will not need to complete this form. 

What you will see on your ONE.UF page will be a card, entitled “Request S/U Grade Option.” The card will provide a link to the S/U Grading Policy and FAQ (Graduate S/U Option Policy Update and FAQ) in case you need some last-minute checking to answer any remaining questions. If you desire to change to S/U grading, you will click on the “S/U Request” link in this card, which will route you to a form that looks like the following:

S/U Grading request form sample

Once you have logged into the form, you will see the list of eligible courses in which you are enrolled this Spring 2020 semester. Next to each course prefix and number, you will see a drop-down field with two choices that will allow you to (1) maintain the letter grading framework (which is the default) or (2) switch to S/U grading. If you wish to change the status of a particular course, select the desired option from the drop-down list. To complete your form, you must read and acknowledge understanding of six statements. Before submitting the form, please review these statements and reach out to your Supervisory Committee Chair, Graduate Coordinator, and/or academic unit if you have questions about any of them.

Once you have modified at least one of your courses and checked all six boxes, you will submit the form by clicking the Submit button at the bottom of the page. Immediately after submitting the form, you will see a confirmation page that summarizes your request and acknowledges that your request was received. You will also receive an email confirmation that your request was successfully sent. No further action is required of you. 

Once you request S/U grading by submitting this form, you will not be able to return to letter grading for the course selected. 

Before you decide, please first consult all the resources available to you, including the S/U Grading Policy and FAQ (Graduate S/U Option Policy Update and FAQ) your department/college guidance; and your Supervisory Committee Chair, GraduateCoordinator, and/or academic unit.  If you have any questions about eligibility of courses for this S/U option, please contact your department or college, which determined whether or not courses are eligible for it. Please do not pressure your instructors to finalize grades early.  You should have a good sense of your standing in the class within this April 6-22 window. 

Also, for those of you thinking about applying to graduate or professional schools in the future, you may want to check your target schools’ admissions web sites for information they may have recently posted about accepting S grades. We will try to keep the S/U Grading Policy and FAQ web page updated with this information as best as we can.