Policies & Procedures

Course Enrollment and Credit Policies

Graduate Level Courses

There are two conditions under which undergraduate students may enroll in graduate courses:

  1. Undergraduate students in their junior or senior year may take graduate courses that will count in their undergraduate program if the graduate courses are relevant to their program of study and there is no similar undergraduate course available; or 
  2. Undergraduate students in the last semester of their senior year may take graduate courses that may later be applied to a graduate program.

Undergraduate students who meet either of these conditions must, further, have an undergraduate GPA of 3.0 or higher. Graduate courses taken prior to the last undergraduate semester may not be applied to a graduate program, and no course may be applied to both an undergraduate and a graduate program. (Exception: Global Gateway for Teachers program graduate credits.)

Even if the student has successfully completed a graduate-level course, it will satisfy degree requirements for a bachelor’s degree only by special permission of the Dean. Approval for graduate-level courses to be applied toward the requirements for a bachelor’s degree is not guaranteed, but rather is granted on a case-by-case basis. To request such approval, the following procedure should be followed:

  1. The student obtains permission from the instructor of the course and the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies to enroll in the graduate-level course;
  2. The student submits an appeal to the Academic Standards Committee; 
  3. The Committee reviews the exception request and notifies the Recorder of the decision; 
  4. The Committee notifies the student of the decision.

In those cases in which undergraduates are permitted to count graduate-level course work toward a bachelor’s degree, no more than 12 credit hours will be counted. Graduate courses taken while an undergraduate and counted toward the requirements of a bachelor’s degree may not count toward a graduate degree at Indiana University (and may also not count toward graduate degrees at other universities). Exceptions may be made for students in the Global Gateway for Teachers Program, but must be approved by the director of that program.

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