Policies Governing the Writing Requirement | University of Pennsylvania

Students can fulfill the Writing Requirement by taking a Critical Writing Seminar, and are strongly encouraged to do so during their freshman year.

Courses taken to satisfy the Writing Requirement must be taken for a letter grade, not pass/fail.
Students must earn a minimum grade of C- in courses taken to fulfill the Writing Requirement.
Writing seminars may not be used to fulfill any other College requirement.

In most cases, the Foreign Language Requirement is fulfilled by completing the fourth-semester course in the language sequence or by demonstrating equivalent competency through language placement.
With the exception of the Foreign Language Requirement, none of these requirements may be satisfied with advanced placement credit (including A-Levels, I.B., and other similar credit based on external examination). In addition, credit awarded by departmental exam can also not be used to fulfill any Foundational Approach.
The same course cannot be used to satisfy more than one Foundational Approach. However, courses taken to satisfy Foundational Approaches may also be used to satisfy the Sector and/or Major Requirement.
Non-College courses approved for the Foundational Approaches are counted as College courses in calculating total credits needed for graduation.
Courses taken to satisfy these requirements must be taken for a letter grade, not pass/fail.
Each of the requirements that make up the Foundational Approaches is satisfied by taking a single course from a list of Requirement Courses, with the exception of the Foreign Language Requirement (which may require anywhere from 0 to 4 c.u. depending on the student's background in the given language).