Ordinarily, students shall be considered full time if they are registered for 8 hours of credit (fall, spring, and summer terms) and their programs of study meet with the approval of the departments. Courses taken as an auditor may not be counted in the definition of “full-time study”; however, courses taken to remove undergraduate deficiencies for admission may be counted. Students holding appointments as associate instructors, gradu­ate assistants, or research assistants must ordinarily be regis­tered for 6 credit hours during each full semester.

For academic purposes, the University Graduate School will consider as full-time certain students who are exceptions to the above definitions:

• M.A. and M.S. candidates whose completed courses and deferred thesis credits total 30 hours
• M.F.A. can­didates whose completed courses and deferred thesis credits total 60 hours
• Ph.D. students whose completed courses and deferred dissertation credits total 90 hours, providing they are working on theses or dissertations for the completion of the degree

Such students, however, must enroll in at least one hour of graduate thesis (for master’s students) or dissertation (for doctoral students) credit each semester.

For master’s can­didates, such enrollment will be limited to the five-year period allowed for completion of the master’s degree; this enrollment for doctoral candidates will be limited to the seven-year period after passing the qualifying examination.

Students who have already accumulated 90 or more hours of graduate credit and who hold university-administered student appointments as associate instructors, graduate assistants, or research assistants amounting to at least 0.375 FTE (15 hours per week workload) will be required to enroll in at least 6 hours of credit during each semester they continue to hold an appointment. Such hours will be charged at the allocated fee rate.

Students may take no more than 16 hours of credit in any semester or more than a total of 16 credit hours in all the summer sessions in any one year without permission of their graduate advisor. Students who are employed are advised to take into account the demands that such activities make on their time and to reduce their course loads accordingly.