Policies & Procedures >> Grades >> Incompletes

Incomplete Grades

Students must take great care before requesting an Incomplete.

• • Incompletes affect the number of credits earned in the short term, and can have an impact on financial aid, athletic eligibility or visa status for international students.
• • Students who receive an Incomplete are rendered ineligible for the Dean's List and possibly Phi Beta Kappa, even if their academic qualifications would have otherwise been sufficient.
• • Students with multiple Incompletes may be placed on Academic Probation or even on a Mandatory Leave of Absence. This leave of absence prevents students from re-enrolling at Penn until all of the incomplete coursework has been finished and those courses' grades reported. This frequently entails at least one semester off from school.
• • Students often find that incomplete coursework from previous semesters is very difficult to finish when they also have a new roster of courses in which they are enrolled.

The decision as to whether to grant an Incomplete or not is solely that of the faculty teaching the course.

If the work for a course is incomplete as a result of the student's unexplained failure to hand in assigned work or to take the final examination at the regularly scheduled time, the instructor will issue a grade of F for the course.

Instructors deciding to grant an extension to students who have not completed a course at the end of the semester may grant either a short Incomplete (I) or a long Incomplete (II). The short Incomplete must be made up within the first four weeks of the next regular semester in which the student is enrolled (summer sessions excluded). The long Incomplete must be made up by the end of the next regular semester in which the student is enrolled (summer sessions excluded). In either case, if the Incomplete is not made up by the deadline, it will become an F. The Incomplete is made up only when the official grade is received by the College Office. After a grade is converted to an F, the instructor may choose to change it. However, once a grade from A+ to F has been entered on a student's transcript and has remained for one semester, it is considered permanent and changes will not ordinarily be permitted. Any exception to this rule must be approved by the dean of the College.

According to University-wide regulations, instructors in all courses must offer a make-up examination to all students who received their permission to be absent from the regularly scheduled final examination. Postponed examinations are normally held during the first week of the fall and spring semesters.

A student will not be graduated until all Incompletes are converted to a letter grade.

The Incomplete designation may not be used to allow a student to repeat the course in a subsequent semester. If a student must repeat a course in order to complete the work for it, the instructor will assign a grade of F for the initial semester and the student must re-register for the course for credit in a subsequent semester. In some cases, the Committee on Undergraduate Academic Standing may permit a student to withdraw retroactively from the course by petition.