Policies & Procedures for Add/Drop and Waitlisting
By-Permission Courses:
Courses designated as “by permission” have instructions in their course descriptions detailing how students can apply to enroll. Permission, once received, must be in writing and should be immediately forwarded to the Registrar’s Office. Once permission has been forwarded, the Registrar’s Office will make you eligible to enroll through add/drop.
Co- and Pre-Requisites completed outside HLS:
If you completed the pre-requisite for a course at another law school or believe you have alternative academic or professional experience that could be considered equivalent to the course requisite, you may petition the faculty member for a requisite waiver. The waiver must be in writing and should be immediately forwarded to the Registrar’s Office. Note: waivers are processed only during business hours and cannot be expedited in order for a student to accept a waitlist offer. Waitlist offers cannot be extended for students to request waivers. For those reasons you should request and forward your waivers as soon as you determine your interest in the class.
Maximum number of Credits:
Students are not permitted to enroll in more than the maximum number of credits, not even temporarily during the add/drop period. Credit requirements for JD and LLM students can be found in the Handbook of Academic Policies.
Repeating Courses:
In most cases, courses are not repeatable, and you may not be enrolled in more than one section of the same course, not even temporarily during the add/drop period. Exception – a small number of courses that change content each semester are designated as repeatable in the course descriptions.
Schedule Conflicts:
Students may not enroll in courses with overlapping meeting times.
Waitlist Offer Expiration:
All waitlist offers expire in 15-hours*. If you do not take action on your offer within the 15-hour window, the seat will be offered to the next waitlisted student. Under no circumstances will a student be reinstated to the top of the waitlist. *Note: during May and June, waitlist offers will expire after 24 hours.
Waitlist Priority Order:
Waitlists are always processed in priority order. You cannot receive special permission to enroll in a course with a waitlist unless every other waitlisted student by priority has already been given a chance to enroll in open seats.
If you are no longer interested in a course for which you are waitlisted, please remove yourself from the waitlist or decline the waitlist offer. This will allow interested students to receive enrollment offers earlier in the process.
HELIOS: Interpreting Information and Results
Search Functionality:
The add/drop search function in HELIOS only includes courses that are available for add/drop to you at that point in time. Students should review the full Course Catalog for a listing of all available course offerings for a given year.
By Permission Courses:
By permission courses are not included in the add/drop search until you have been given permission to add into the course by the faculty member and the permission has been forwarded to the Office of the Registrar and processed.
Capacity & Waitlist Numbers:
The Program Capacity and Waitlist numbers listed on each course are for each student’s specific population only. (Ex. 1Ls viewing spring electives will only see the number of seats available to 1L students.) Most courses have additional seats reserved for other student populations.
For examples of add/drop functions in HELIOS, please view the Helios Add/Drop Presentation Slides. (Note: the functions in HELIOS are the same for all students. However, the slides were specifically created for LLM students and may have different credit totals. Please visit the handbook for official details on the JD credit requirements.)