The Harvard Medical School's Office of the Registrar

ADDING OR DROPPING COURSES

Preclinical Courses

Preclinical elective courses may be added or dropped up until three weeks after the start of the course. This also applies to courses meeting the Social Medicine/Health Care policy requirement. If not dropped within the deadline, the course or its equivalent must be completed prior to graduation. A student who is registered for a preclinical course and does not drop it, must complete the course or its equivalent prior to graduation. The Preclinical Drop/Add form must be submitted to the registrar's office.

All registration will be considered tentative until after the drop/add deadline. Minimum and maximum enrollments will then be checked. If a course is oversubscribed, the registrants will be entered into a lottery. Those selected will be notified by the Registrar's Office. Harvard Medical School students have priority over cross-registered students for spaces in courses that meet core degree requirements.

Clinical and ABS Courses

Requests for new clerkships or changes to scheduled clerkships must be submitted to the Registrar's Office on the Clinical Years 3&4 Drop/Add Form (also available at the Registrar's Office). These change requests will be processed in batch on a monthly basis. Students will be sent a revised schedule once an addendum has been considered.

A student must fill an "unscheduled" month two months before the start of the rotation. Fourth-year students have first priority for scheduling core, elective, and ABS courses. Harvard students retain priority over other students until 90 days before the start of a given course; subsequently any existing openings may be committed to students from other schools.

Any request to drop a clinical clerkship or Advanced Biomedical Sciences Program (ABS) course must be made at least 2 months prior to the beginning of the course. Once a clinical clerkship or ABS course has started, it may not be dropped

There are deadlines for changes to clerkships (core, elective and ABS courses) for a number of reasons. Some of these are:

Many courses have minimum enrollment requirements that must be met in order for the course to be taught. Should a course fall below its minimum enrollment and be cancelled, adequate notification to students affected by the cancellation is needed.

Course Directors and administrators require 4 to 5 weeks notification of who will be taking their course.

Many clerkships (particularly the core clerkships) mail materials to students in advance of the course start date and also prepare in advance for such things as setting up the clinical schedule, computer accounts, arranging for lockers and having name badges made up.

Because there is no "waitlist" on clerkship requests, should you drop a course past the deadline, the slot may go unused. If you hold onto a clerkship slot past the drop/add deadline, you may prevent a fellow classmate from being able to take that course.

Procedue for Requesting a Change After the Deadline

Allowing students to make a change after the posted deadline is permitted only if there are unusual and compelling circumstances. If you wish to request to drop a course after the posted deadline, you must make the request in writing and submit the request to the HMS Registrar’s Office.

The letter must detail the reason for the requested change and the circumstances that led to needing to make a change after the deadline.

Once the written request is received, it will be reviewed and the student will be notified of the decision. If a student wants to appeal that decision, they must discuss their request and the basis for it with their Associate Master. The Registrar and the Associate Master will then confer about the case and make a final decision.