Eight schools that do not file a failing grade as an F
We verify grade-point scales against registrar pages one school at a time, 83 so far. Do that for long enough and the exceptions start to cluster: an F is not universal. Eight of those 83 schools do not publish an F at all.
The eight
| School | Failing mark | Grade points |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona State University | E | 0 |
| University of Washington | E | 0 |
| University of Florida | E | 0 |
| University of Michigan | E | 0 |
| Harvard University | E | 0 |
| Brigham Young University | E | 0 |
| University of Arizona | E | 0 |
| Stanford University | NP | 0 |
Seven E's and one NP. And four more schools publish E or NP alongside an F row, all at zero: Ohio State lists E, F and NP; Utah lists E and F; Berkeley and Oklahoma list NP next to F. Across the full 83, an F row appears in 75 tables, an E row in 9, an NP row in 4.
Why it changes nothing in the arithmetic — and everything on the transcript
In all of these tables, the failing mark is worth 0 grade points, exactly like an F. So if two students take the same courses and fail the same one, one at Michigan and one at a school that writes F, their GPAs are identical. The mark differs; the number does not.
What differs is everything around the number. An E is a graded failure — it counts as an attempt, appears in the GPA denominator with its credits, and is the notation some employers and graduate programs will read. NP reads as "no pass" and at Stanford sits in a 4.3-point scale where an A+ is worth 4.3, so the same student can be a 4.3-scale high achiever and still hold a zero-point NP. Those are different stories on a transcript even when the arithmetic is the same.
Practically, the thing that goes wrong is a calculator that does not offer the mark. If your dropdown only has F and you failed with an E, you may think you are guessing — you are not, the value is 0 either way. Our Michigan and Arizona State pages only list the marks those registrars actually use, so the dropdown matches the transcript.
Two data notes, because we would rather show them than hide them
We flag what we cannot yet confirm. On the University of Arizona page, our extraction of the registrar's table records a D as 0 grade points, which disagrees with the aggregated databases we cross-check against. The page shows the official source link and the mismatch note rather than quietly picking a version. It is on our re-verification list.
Absence of a letter is data too. Several schools simply do not use plus/minus grades — MIT's transcript carries A, B, C, D and F with no modifiers, and its scale follows. That is not a mistake in the table; it is the policy. It is also why picking a school's own scale matters more than any general-purpose calculator: the exceptions are not rare edge cases, they are the norm once you look at 83 schools.
Check yours in a minute
Find your school in the directory, compare the failing row on the page against your own transcript, and if it disagrees with what your registrar told you, write to support@gradeplot.com — we re-verify against the source and update the page.