Short answer first: take it for a real elective outside your field, never for a course you are already failing, and only after checking that no program you might apply to later needs the course graded. The University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts and Science allows 2.0 credits of Credit/No Credit, chosen or removed on ACORN no later than the last day of classes. UBC Vancouver's Credit/D/Fail allows 6 credits a session and 12 per degree, decided by the drop deadline. McGill's Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory option allows one elective a term. None of the three counts in the GPA, and none normally counts towards a major.
The rules below come from each university's own calendar or student pages. They differ in every detail that matters, including the mark you need, so read your own before the deadline rather than after it.
What is the option even called where you are?
Three universities, three names, three sets of arithmetic. There is no Canadian version of this rule, because each university writes its own grading regulations, which is the same reason a Canadian GPA does not travel between institutions.
| Toronto, Arts & Science | UBC Vancouver | McGill | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Credit/No Credit (CR/NCR) | Credit/D/Fail (Cr/D/F) | Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (S/U) |
| Province | Ontario | British Columbia | Quebec |
| How much | Up to 2.0 credits across the degree | 6 credits attempted per session, 12 credits with Credit or D standing per degree | One elective course per term, up to 10 percent of your McGill degree credits |
| Deadline | Choose or remove on ACORN no later than the last day of classes | The same deadline as dropping a course without a W standing | Add by the last day of add/drop, remove by the withdrawal without refund deadline |
| What earns the pass | A final mark of at least 50 percent earns CR | 55 percent and above is CR, 50 to 54.9 is D, below 50 is F | A C or better, a minimum mark of 55 percent, converts to S |
| In the GPA | No effect on the GPA | Not counted in the weighted-credit average | S and U are not included in GPA calculations |
| Towards a program | Not normally for Specialist, Major or Minor; counts for degree credits and Breadth | Electives only; Science requires percentage grading for specialization courses and minors | Electives only; not for Minor, Major or Honours |
Two patterns hold across all three. The option is scarce, measured in a handful of credits per degree. And it buys you protection from the average at the price of the course counting for anything else.
How does Toronto's CR/NCR actually work?
It is the most generous deadline in the country and the easiest one to misread. The Faculty of Arts and Science lets a student select up to 2.0 credits to be assessed on a Credit/No Credit basis, and the choice is made or unmade on ACORN no later than the last day of classes. Once that deadline passes the decision cannot be reversed.
- The threshold is the pass mark. A final mark of at least 50 percent is recorded as CR. A final mark below 50 percent is recorded as NCR.
- CR is a credit, NCR is not. A CR course counts as a degree credit. An NCR course does not, so a failed CR/NCR course still leaves a hole in your 20.0 credits.
- The GPA does not move. A course with a final status of CR has no effect on the grade point average calculation, and Toronto's calendar lists CR/NCR courses among those excluded from the GPA.
- Breadth yes, program no. A CR course can count towards the Breadth Requirements, but cannot normally be used to satisfy program completion requirements for a Specialist, Major or Minor, or the 12.0 distinct credits required between programs.
The late deadline is the part students get wrong in both directions. Because you can decide after the final exam, there is no reason to decide in September, and no reason to decide before you have seen your term marks. But the same lateness means the decision arrives when you are tired and guessing, so work out the rule in week one and only the number in April.
How does UBC's Credit/D/Fail work?
Tighter, earlier, and with a higher bar. The UBC Vancouver calendar limits the option to percentage-graded elective courses and to students in some direct-entry undergraduate programs, and states that no more than twelve credits with Credit or D standing may be applied towards any such degree program and no more than six credits may be attempted as Cr/D/F in any one session. Students registered in graduate programs are not eligible in any course.
The deadline is the same as the deadline to drop a course without a W standing, and a student cannot change from a percentage grade to a Cr/D/F standing, or back, after it. That is months earlier than Toronto's, and it means you choose before you know very much.
Three details change the calculation. UBC Student Services sets the standings at CR for 55 percent and above, D for 50 to 54.9 percent and F below 50 percent, so a mark that would pass at Toronto can land you a bare D at UBC. The standing is recorded on the official transcript in place of the percentage grade. And while Cr/D/F standings do not count towards the weighted-credit average used for academic performance evaluations, the calendar states they are still considered in adjudicating requirements based on the percentage of courses passed or failed, so an F still behaves like an F for your standing. If that matters to your situation, academic probation in Canada sets out what those evaluations do.
UBC's Faculty of Science narrows the word elective further than most students expect. It requires percentage grading for the Lower-level Requirements, the Communication requirement, Science Breadth and any course required for a specialization, including minors. What is left over is genuinely optional, and that is the only pool the option applies to.
How does McGill's S/U option work?
By the term, not by the degree. McGill lets most eligible students designate one elective course per term under the S/U option, up to 10 percent of the degree credits completed at McGill. Courses with a final grade of S or U are not included in GPA calculations and do not count towards major or minor requirements.
The two deadlines are separate and both recurring. You add the option by the last day of add/drop for that course. You may remove it later, up to the withdrawal without refund deadline for that section. That gives a short window of hindsight but nothing like Toronto's.
McGill's Faculty of Arts publishes the conversion: to get an S a student must earn a C or better, a minimum mark of 55 percent, and a course taken under S/U does not count towards a Minor Concentration, Major Concentration or Honours. The eligibility list is narrower than the other two as well. Students in Dentistry, Medicine, and Physical and Occupational Therapy cannot use it, nor can graduate, continuing studies and non-degree students, and first-year students in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Arts, Arts and Science, and Science are excluded.
Can it satisfy a prerequisite?
Treat the answer as no until a page tells you otherwise, because this is where the option does its real damage. UBC's own eligibility checklist asks students to make sure the course is not a prerequisite for something they will need later. Toronto's calendar is explicit that CR does not normally satisfy program completion requirements. UBC Science warns off any course required for a specialization, including a minor you have not declared yet.
The trap is chronological. In first and second year you do not know which minor you will want, which specialization will accept you, or which professional program you will apply to. A course taken for credit only in October of first year is a decision made by a person with less information than you will have two years later, and it cannot be undone once the deadline passes.
The safe test has three parts. Is the course on any list of requirements for anything you might plausibly do. Is it a prerequisite for a course you might plausibly take. Would an admissions office you might plausibly apply to want to see a grade in it. One yes is enough to keep the percentage.
What do graduate and professional schools do with it?
The ones that publish a method remove those courses from the calculation. They do not remove them from the transcript.
UVic states that its graduate admissions GPA is built from your most recent eligible coursework equivalent to 30 units, and that non-graded courses, for example courses with pass/fail or complete grades, are ineligible. Dalhousie's medical school calculates its admissions GPA from your 60 most recent graded credit hours and states that Pass/Fail and Credit/No Credit courses will not be included in it. UBC Student Services tells students to consider the possible impact of Cr/D/F grading on future graduate program admissions, and adds that a course without a percentage grade may affect scholarship eligibility.
Read what that exclusion does arithmetically, because it is not neutral. If a school counts your most recent 60 credit hours and one of those courses is not graded, the window slides backwards to include an older course instead. A light term taken partly for credit only can pull a weaker earlier term into the range that gets counted. The same mechanic is described in more detail in how Canadian medical schools recalculate a GPA, and it applies to any school that counts a fixed number of recent credits.
Beyond the arithmetic, be careful with claims about what committees think. Very few publish a position on this, and the honest statement is the narrow one: where a school publishes a method, the method excludes the course.
When is it actually a good idea?
When the course is genuinely outside your field, genuinely optional, and you would otherwise not take it. That is the case UBC describes in its own words when it says the option exists to encourage curiosity in subjects outside a student's own program of study. A physics student taking a music history course, an English student taking an introductory statistics course they will never use again: these are the cases the rule was written for.
The questions to answer before the deadline
- Is this course required for my program, a minor, or a prerequisite chain? If yes, stop.
- Is it inside my 2.0 credits at Toronto, 12 credits at UBC, or 10 percent at McGill? Check what you have already used.
- Which deadline applies, and is it the drop deadline or the last day of classes?
- What mark earns the pass here: 50 percent, 55 percent, or a C?
- Will any school I might apply to recalculate my GPA from graded courses only?
Answer those five in week one, in writing, and the decision later is arithmetic rather than panic.
When does it cost you?
The courses to never take this way
A course you are failing. The option protects the average, but an NCR at Toronto earns no degree credit, and a UBC F still counts as a failure in evaluations based on courses passed. You have swapped a bad grade for a missing credit, and the missing credit follows you to graduation.
A course in your own field. It is the courses closest to your program that admissions committees and employers read most carefully, and a CR in third-year organic chemistry tells a reader nothing except that something happened.
A course you might need later. This is the expensive one, and it is invisible at the time.
A course you would have done well in. The cap is small. Spending one of 2.0 credits on a course you would have finished at 80 percent is throwing away both the grade and the option.
The better response to a term that is going badly is almost never the grading mode. It is dropping one course inside the deadline, moving the hours onto the courses that decide your standing, and testing yourself on the material weekly rather than rereading it, which is what active recall is. The rhythm of a Canadian term, with the December and April exam periods sitting a few days after the last class, is set out in how Canadian university exams actually work.
Where Notibo fits
Most of the pressure that makes the credit only option look attractive builds in the weeks when you were in the lecture but not really keeping up with it. Notibo records a lecture, or takes an audio file you upload, and returns a transcript, structured notes and flashcards with spaced repetition, so an elective outside your field can be reviewed in twenty minutes a week instead of being written off. It also turns PDF, PPTX and DOCX files into notes and flashcards, which covers slide decks and readings. It transcribes 89 languages, and the transcript is in the language spoken.
Pro is free to try for 14 days with no card, and the trial includes 240 minutes of recording. Afterwards the free plan covers 30 minutes of recording a month. Pro is EUR 9.99 a month or EUR 88.99 a year, in euro, with the local amount shown at checkout. Uploads are capped at 50 MB, and long recordings are saved in smaller parts as they run and joined back into one transcript. Files are stored in the EU on Supabase in Frankfurt, while transcription and the AI notes run on US processors under standard contractual clauses. Recording a class needs permission, so ask your instructor first.