The university regulations in a nutshell

The university imposes several requirements on course enrollments and performance. In general, these requirements are not negotiable, and as they are university regulations they are beyond the control of the Department or the GPD.

Exactly 9 (or 12) credits

You must be enrolled in a specific number of credits each semester:

• G3 students must be enrolled in 9 or 12 credits of graduate course work, depending on department regulations.
• G4 students must be enrolled in exactly 9 credits of graduate course work.
• G5 students must be enrolled in exactly 9 credits, of which at least 6 credits must be Dissertation Research (LIN 699, LIN 700, or LIN 701). Unless you are enrolled in a graduate certificate, the remaining credits must also come from LIN courses at Stony Brook. The specific enrollment requirements for G5 students have changed a lot in the last few years, consult with the GPD for up-to-date guidance.

Start enrolling before the semester

You must be enrolled in at least 1 credit of course work before the beginning of each semester. You are advised to do so at least a week before the semester starts as students sometimes encounter unexpected problems with course enrollments that take time to resolve. If you try to enroll Friday afternoon and run into an issue, you probably won’t be able to get it fixed before the semester starts. Students who are not registered for at least 1 credit of course work before day 1 of classes will be charged a late fee.

Finalize by the end of week 2

You must be enrolled for the correct number of credits by the end of week 2 of the semester. Specific deadlines apply for dropping/adding/swapping courses after the end of week 2. Please check the academic calendar or contact your GPD.

Mostly LIN courses

At least half of your credits (rounded up) must be under an LIN designator. Exceptions are granted in cases where you have to complete specific non-LIN courses required for a graduate certificate you are enrolled in. This is also one of the few cases where G5 students do not currently need special permission to enroll in a course other than Dissertation Research.

Non-degree courses do not count towards 9 credits

The GPD may grant you permission to take courses outside your primary program, i.e. courses which do not have an LIN designator. However, if the GPD deems that these courses do not apply towards the PhD in Linguistics, you can only take them on top of your regular course load. In that case, you may have to pay for those courses as your tuition fellowship only covers a specific number of credits.

GPA >= 3.0

You must maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Otherwise the university will put you on academic probation, which can lead to dismissal from the program. Maintaining a sufficient GPA isn’t usually a problem, but we had cases in the past where a student had multiple Incompletes they didn’t take care of in time. That caused those Incompletes to automatically convert to Fs, which caused the student’s GPA to drop below the 3.0 threshold.

What counts as a course?

As far as the university is concerned, almost anything with a graduate-level course designator that you can enroll in on SOLAR counts as a graduate course. Note that graduate students cannot take undergraduate courses for credit. You can only enroll in graduate level courses. This includes:

1. Linguistics with LIN5xx designators or higher.