Course Selection

Course Loads
Twelve credit hours is considered full-time status for undergraduates. An undergraduate student must be enrolled for a minimum of 12 hours to qualify for full-time certification to any organization.

Full-time undergraduates normally take five courses per semester. Since a majority of courses carry three semester hours of credit with some carrying four hours of credit, a normal course load is 15 or 16 hours per semester. To complete most undergraduate degrees in four years, students should plan to carry 15 or 16 hours per semester.

Undergraduates may not take more than 19 hours per semester except with the approval of Student Academic Services. Students who have cumulative grade point averages of 3.0 may be authorized, in special circumstances and at the discretion of the Director of Student Academic Services, to carry a maximum of 21 semester hours of course work.

Suggested Academic Workload Guidelines
Students should be aware that academic excellence and scholastic achievement usually require a significant investment of time in study, research, and out-of-class projects. To provide guidance to students in planning their academic and work schedules, the following recommendations are offered:

1. In general, students should plan to devote between 2-3 hours outside of class for each hour in class. Thus, students with a 15-hour course load should schedule between 30-45 hours weekly for completing outside-of-class reading, study, and homework assignments.

2. Students who are employed more than 5-10 hours each week should consider reducing their course loads (credit hours), depending upon their study habits, learning abilities and course work requirements.

Course Levels
Course level numbers are structured as follows:

The Undergraduate Bulletin lists complete course descriptions for courses numbered 100 through 599. Please see The Graduate School Bulletin for information on 600- and 700-level graduate courses.

Adding Courses
Students may add courses to their schedules during the Schedule Adjustment (Drop/Add) period. Between the end of the Drop/Add period and the 10^th day of classes, a student desiring to add a course may do so only with the approval of the instructor.

Late Adds
After the 10^th day of classes, adding with instructor permission will be accepted by the University Registrar's Office only under extraordinary circumstances.

Dropping Courses
Withdrawal from a course or courses within the first eight weeks of the semester shall be without penalty and hours shall not be computed as hours attempted.

Withdrawal without penalty from a course or courses after the eight-week deadline but before the end of the semester shall be approved only for appropriate cause as determined by appropriate documentation of medical, psychological, or administrative reasons. A student should initiate a request for withdrawal without penalty from one or more causes through the Office of Student Academic Services. Courses of less than one semester's duration, including summer school courses, shall have shorter deadlines (proportional to the eight-week deadline for the regular semester) for withdrawal. These deadlines are published in the semester Schedule of Courses or class syllabi.

The Director of Student Academic Services shall be responsible for authorizing these withdrawals after consultation with the instructor, and with other agencies.

The grade W indicates that the student either withdrew from the course within the eight-week, no-penalty period or that the student withdrew at a later date for appropriate cause determined by medical, psychological, or administrative reasons.

If a student is enrolled in only one course and drops that course, the student is considered officially withdrawn from the University. See Withdrawal.