For anyone with experience, what is the process of taking a course outside of mac? how are courses taken online with Athabasca graded and calculated in mcmaster's gpa calc? Does it show up on the transcript?

Thanks!!

McMaster's policy is that courses taken at other institutions are graded as Pass/Fail in the GPA calculation. HOWEVER, this only applies to McMaster's GPA (e.g. for Dean's List). It will show up on the transcript as a Pass (assuming you pass).

When applying for professional schools/grad schools/etc. they WILL take that mark into account. How? It depends on how the other institution (Athabasca in your example) does grades and how it converts to the 4.0 GPA system. You can Google up the specific school you have in mind and see how their grades work.