Academic Load

Your enrollment status is based on how many credit hours you take per semester. We use credit hours to verify your enrollment and for financial aid purposes.

What's considered full-time may differ between enrollment and financial aid. For information regarding your financial aid eligibility, contact the Financial Aid Office.

Undergraduate Students

¹This maximum may be exceeded by special request of the respective academic dean and approval from the Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Rarely is this exception allowed more than once in the student’s academic career.

Graduate Students

The following semester hours of credit are to be used to certify full-time and half-time attendance of graduate students.

For more information about graduate student academic load requirements please visit:

Gradute School | Course Loads

Adjustment of Maximum Hours

Approval for a registration overload must be requested by the student. The student's advisor should complete the Adjustment of Maximum Hours form, obtain the appropriate Dean's signature, and forward the fully-endorsed form to either the Registration Office (for undergraduates), Graduate Registration (for graduate students), or the Registrar's Office in the School of Law (for Law students) for final processing. This form may also be used to lower a student's maximum hours.

What are the maximum registration hours normally permitted for students?

During a regular 16-week Fall or Spring semester:

• for undergraduates, 18 hours (14 hours if on probation);
• for most graduate students², 16 hours; and,
• for Law students, 18 hours.

During a Summer session:

• for undergraduates, 12 hours³ (7 hours if on probation);
• for graduate students, 9 hours; and,
• for Law students, 9 hours.

Individual departments may restrict their students to a lower number of maximum hours if they believe that their program(s) warrant that. Individual departments may also request that the maximum hours be raised for their students if they believe that their program(s), especially during Summer sessions, warrant that (though that will likely require the appropriate Dean's approval).

University employees and graduate assistants are restricted in their maximum hours. See the Undergraduate Catalog (Grading and Scholastic Regulations section, Academic Load subsection) or chapter 1 of the Graduate Catalog (General Regulations and Procedures section, Graduate Student Course Loads subsection) for more details on these and other maximum hour restrictions.

² Graduate students in ECE are limited to 12 hours, while those in CS are limited to 9 hours (though, effective Spring 2016, CS Ph.D. students are limited to 10 hours).

³ Prior to Summer 2019, this undergraduate amount was normally 9 hours.