• Undergraduate Bulletin Index
  • Academic Regulations & Policies
    • Academic Integrity
    • Academic Requirements & Limits
    • Academic Standing
    • Auditing Courses
    • Average Time to Graduation
    • Class Attendance
    • Classification of Students
    • Course Selection
    • Credit Regulations & Limits
    • Declaring/Changing Majors
    • Grading Policies & Grades
    • Graduation
    • Orientation Programs
    • Other Academic Regulations
    • Placement Exams
    • Registering for Courses
    • Student Academic Services (SAS)
    • Student Success Center
    • Tuition Surcharge
    • University Registrar's Office (URO)
    • Withdrawal

Course Selection

Course Loads

Twelve semester 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 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 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 (semester hours), depending upon their study habits, learning abilities, and course work requirements.

Course Levels

Course level numbers are structured as follows:

100–199	intended primarily for freshmen
200–299	intended primarily for sophomores
300–399	intended primarily for juniors
400–499	intended primarily for seniors
500–599	intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students; these courses are not open to freshmen and sophomores
600–749	registration restricted to students who are classified as graduate students
750–799	registration restricted to students admitted to doctoral programs

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 Drop/Add period. Between the end of the Drop/Add period and the 10th day of classes, a student desiring to add a course may do so only with the written approval of the instructor.

Late Adds

After the 10th 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 courses 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 on the University Registrar's Web site.

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

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.