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General Rules Relating to the Use of Acceleration Credits

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
  1. Notification   The chief responsibility for ascertaining eligibility and for meeting the deadline to apply for acceleration rests with the students themselves. However, the Registrar's Office will make reasonable efforts to inform students, at the beginning of the third term of enrollment, of their eligibility to accelerate by one or two terms.

    It is not the responsibility of the Registrar's Office or Yale College to remind students who have declared an intention to accelerate of the rules on the pattern of attendance stipulated for the use of acceleration credits. Students who are accelerating are themselves responsible for planning to meet these rules, and if a student's pattern of attendance does not conform to them, it will be concluded that the student has decided to relinquish the use of acceleration credits and not to accelerate. Such a student will be automatically decelerated.
  2. Interruption of studies by leave or withdrawal   Terms of enrollment need not be consecutive. A student accelerating by one or two terms has the same privileges of leave of absence or withdrawal that a nonaccelerating student has.
  3. A third term of leave of absence   A student taking an accelerated degree by use of acceleration credits who has had two terms of leave of absence may receive a third term of leave if it is needed to bring the student's pattern of attendance into conformity with the pattern of attendance stipulated for an accelerated degree. See under Leave of Absence; a student who has received long-term loans through Yale or who is receiving financial aid from Yale should particularly note paragraph 8 under Leave of Absence.
  4. Withdrawal   If a student withdraws from a term after the date on which course schedules for that term are due, the uncompleted term counts as a term of enrollment, both in the determination of the student's eligibility to accelerate and in the calculation of the number of terms in which the student has been in attendance at Yale. As an exception to this rule, if an accelerating student withdraws from Yale College on the recommendation of Yale Health without having successfully completed a term, the student has the option of not counting the uncompleted term as one of the six or seven terms of enrollment.
  5. Enrollment in Yale Summer Session or the Yale-in-London summer program   Attendance at Yale Summer Session or the summer program at the Paul Mellon Centre in London does not constitute a term of enrollment. Thus a student accelerating by one term may not offer attendance at Yale Summer Session or the summer program at the Paul Mellon Centre in London as one of the required seven terms of enrollment in Yale College. Course credits earned by attendance at these summer programs, however, may be applied toward the requirements for the bachelor's degree by accelerating students, provided that such students meet the conditions specified for acceleration by one or two terms. See also Courses in Yale Summer Session and Yale-in-London Summer Program under Special Arrangements.
  6. Course credit from outside Yale   A student accelerating by two terms must earn at least twenty-seven course credits at Yale, and a student accelerating by one term must earn at least thirty-two course credits at Yale. Therefore, an accelerating student may not apply any credit earned at another college or university toward the 36-course-credit requirement for the bachelor's degree. A student, whether accelerating or not, may be permitted to apply course credits earned at another college or university toward the requirements of the student's major program or toward any of the distributional requirements other than those for the freshman year. See Credit from Other Universities.

    (Please note that attendance at the Yale College program at the Paul Mellon Centre in London during the spring term counts just as if it were a term of enrollment at Yale College in New Haven, as does attendance at the Peking University–Yale University Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing. Attendance at the Paul Mellon Centre during the summer, however, does not count as a term of enrollment. See Yale-in-London Summer Program under Special Arrangements.)
  7. Year or Term Abroad   A Year Abroad counts as two terms and a Term Abroad counts as one term of enrollment in Yale College. Credits earned on a Year or Term Abroad count as the equivalent of Yale course credits.

    Note that after a Year or Term Abroad all students must attend two subsequent terms in Yale College; see Year or Term Abroad under Special Arrangements. In many cases a student must relinquish the use of acceleration credits and decelerate in order to take a Year or Term Abroad. As a special exception, a student accelerating by one or two terms who wishes to complete a term of study abroad as early as during the third term of enrollment would have to petition to accelerate before the third term of enrollment. A student who wishes to accelerate and to take a Year or Term Abroad should consult with the residential college dean and the Center for International Experience at the earliest opportunity.

    An accelerating student who wishes also to complete a Year or Term Abroad must conform to one of the following schemes:

    Terms of Acceleration

    		 Total Terms at Yale Terms on YA/TA Acceleration Credits Minimum Course Credits Earned at Yale Maximum Course Credits Earned on YA/TA
    1 6 1 4 28 4
    1 5 2 4 23 9
    2 5 1 9 23 4
    2 4 2 9 18 9
  8. Distributional requirements   Acceleration credits may not be employed to meet the distributional requirements for the freshman, sophomore, or junior years, or the distributional requirements for the bachelor's degree, including the foreign language requirement. With permission, an accelerating student may apply course credit earned at another college or university toward the distributional requirements for the bachelor's degree and to those for the sophomore and junior years; students should consult with the residential college dean to be directed to the appropriate authority for such approval.
  9. Major requirements   With the permission of the director of undergraduate studies, an accelerating student may apply credit earned at another university toward the requirements of the student's major program.
  10. Makeup of course credit deficiency   If an accelerating student's record at the end of a term of enrollment shows a deficiency for promotion, academic good standing, or graduation, the student will be allowed to repair the deficiency without forfeiting the use of acceleration credits only through enrollment in Yale Summer Session if the credit earned is to be applied toward the 36-course-credit requirement for the bachelor's degree. See under Promotion and Good Standing.
  11. Enrollment after graduation as a nondegree student   Accelerating students who have qualified for the award of the bachelor's degree are eligible, as are all Yale College graduates, for full-time enrollment in Yale College as nondegree students. Because such students will have graduated, they will not be eligible for financial aid. See under Nondegree Students Program.
  12. Transfer students   Students admitted by transfer from other colleges and universities are not eligible for acceleration by the use of acceleration credits.