Welcome to the FAQ section of our graduate resources page, where we’ve compiled answers to your most common questions to help you navigate your academic journey with ease.
Enrollment, academic records, and deadlines
The answer to this question depends on multiple factors. To meet basic continuous enrollment requirements at ASU, graduate students must enroll in at least 1 graduate level credit each fall and spring semester. Failure to do so will result in discontinuation from their program. Additionally, if you are defending a thesis or dissertation, starting a program, graduating, or completing your comprehensive exams in the summer, you must then be enrolled in at least 1 graduate level credit as well.
You must factor your funding situation into your enrollment choice as well. If you are a TA or RA, you must enroll in at least 6 credit hours during fall and spring terms and at least 1 credit hour during summer terms in order to receive your tuition remission. The tuition remission covers up to 18 credits in fall and spring terms and up to 14 (7 in A session, 7 in B session) credits in summer terms, so it is more typical for students to take a full course load in these terms, perhaps 9-12 credit hours. If you are a GSA, however, we recommend you only take 1 credit, as the higher GSA salary is intended to help you pay for 1 credit of tuition and health insurance. You do not receive tuition remission as a GSA, so you are responsible for paying for however many credits you enroll in. If you have no funding, have a scholarship, or are using financial aid, be sure to review the terms of your award(s) to make sure you are enrolling in whatever amount they require. Financial aid often changes if you are enrolled full-time or less than full-time, so please review the full-time section on our enrollment page.
When in doubt, or if you are debating a change to your enrollment, always consult the SOLS Graduate Office to make sure you are not making a change that will impact your financial situation.
A session is the first 8 weeks in a semester, B session is the second 8 weeks in a semester, and C session is the full 16 week semester.
Specific research, thesis, and dissertation credit hours are set up for your specific program, and you only have approval to add the credit hours for your specific program. Research is always 592 for MS students and 792 for PhD students, under the subject associated with your particular program (i.e., Environmental Life Sciences PhD students will always enroll in ELS 792, Biology PhD students BIO 792, and Biology MS students BIO 592). The same is true for thesis and dissertation credit hours. 599 under the subject associated with your particular program are the thesis credit hours for MS students, and 799 under the subject associate with your particular program are the dissertation credit hours for PhD students.
Please note: Research, thesis, and dissertation credit hours (and potentially several other courses you may see on the schedule) are always set up with the current Graduate Associate Director as the instructor. You will not select your specific PI when you enroll. This is simply how the courses are set up, but we expect you to consult with your PI when selecting the number of credits as they will oversee your research.
Research, thesis, and dissertation courses are set up for students to choose between 1 and 15 credits to enroll in during a given semester. Generally, 1 credit equals about 3 hours of work per week in a traditional 16 week semester. You should choose your credit hours based on this ratio and work to estimate it as close as possible. We understand that your time may fluctuate, and your PI is ultimately monitoring your work however they see fit. If you end up putting in more time than you enrolled for (i.e., enrolled in 3 credits but put in 15 hours of research each week), then you may consider enrolling in a few extra research credits the following semester to capture that time you put in.
These courses are set up so that students automatically get a "Z" grade at the end of each semester, meaning their work is "In Progress". These grades are automatically changed to "Y" grades, meaning "Pass" by the SOLS Graduate Office when you successfully defend your thesis or dissertation. No action is needed from you to ensure these grades are changed appropriately.
Funding and scholarships
Each semester, the SOLS Graduate Office sends an email with a Google form for students to fill out to request their specific position. The Google form is typically sent out in February for summer positions, June for fall positions, and October for spring positions. Please be on the lookout and plan to fill this out so our office can ensure you are appropriately hired. If you have guaranteed funding, you will subsequently receive a funding offer letter with the specific details about your position for that particular semester. If you do not have guaranteed funding, then you may or may not receive a funding offer.
It depends on the nature of the award. Those who receive a Completion Fellowship and see this priority task should ignore it, as our office requests an exception to this enrollment requirement so the award can post while enrolled in just 1 credit. Other scholarships like the Graduate College University Grant or a grant from SOLS may be eligible for an enrollment exception. If it was, you would have requested it on the award letter and confirmation you signed, so please refer back to that or check in with our office, as we may have requested an enrollment exception for you. Please keep in mind that these enrollment exceptions are processed by the financial aid office within the first couple weeks of the semester. Do not be alarmed by the priority task and remain patient as they manually enter the exceptions, which will be done before the tuition payment deadline.
Please note: There is no enrollment exception option for RA/TA remission and you must enroll in at least 6 credit hours during fall and spring semesters to receive those funds.
Our office manually enters RA/TA tuition remission and health insurance remission for each hired student alphabetically within the first 2 weeks of the semester. This process takes time, so please do not be alarmed by charges on your account. Your awards will be posted before the tuition payment deadline. If they have not posted by that date, please notify our office immediately at sols.grad@asu.edu.
Please note that you must have direct deposit set up through your My ASU page in order to have your paychecks deposited directly into your bank account. You have a "student" and "staff" view in your My ASU. The direct deposit must be set up on the "staff" side. Check to make sure that is set up appropriately by logging into your My ASU, locating the "My Employment" box, then select the "Direct Deposit" hyperlink under the "Payroll" tab. If that is set up correctly and you indeed did not receive your pay, please contact our office immediately at sols.grad@asu.edu so we can look into the issue. If your direct deposit is not set up yet, then your paycheck would have been sent to whatever mailing address you have on file. Make sure to check that and ensure that is correct as well.
iPOS
The iPOS, or Interactive Plan of Study, is a tool that helps you navigate your program requirements and track your progress through your program. Most of your program milestones are tracked through the iPOS as well, including the results of your comprehensive exams (for PhD students) and your final defense. You can access it from your My ASU page: navigate to the My Programs box, then select the dropdown next to your program name, then select the iPOS dropdown, then the hyperlink to the iPOS.
We recommend that you submit your initial iPOS for approval as soon as you have identified a major advisor (for most students this will be within one month of starting your program). However, the Graduate College requires you submit it by the end of your first semester. Additionally, your planned coursework may change, or it may end up differing from what you actually enroll in. For this reason, we also ask that you check and update your iPOS once every semester. Regular updates will better prepare you for your program milestones as well.
If you completed a master’s degree at ASU or another institution prior to the start of your PhD, you may be eligible to transfer up to 30 credit hours. You will need to ensure we have your official MS transcripts on file. If we do, you may then navigate to the“Courses” tab in iPOS, then select the “Previous Degree” tab. Once you’ve filled in the information on this page, you’ll be able to add the blanket hours to the appropriate category on your plan of study on the “Course Admin” page. You should consult with your major advisor prior and the Program Director for your graduate program before adding the blanket credit hours.
If you would like to add a previous course to replace a specific requirement of your degree program, you should discuss this first with your major advisor and the Program Director for your graduate program. Once you have their approval, you will be able to request the specific course transfer by adding the blanket credit hours in the appropriate amount. Be sure to send your major advisor’s and the Program Director’s approvals to sols.grad@asu.edu.
Please note: If you obtained a MS degree at ASU, you should see the option to add all of your MS courses to your PhD iPOS on the Course Admin page. If you do this, multiple petitions will likely populate because the system will assume you are attempting to override a Graduate College policy. If you did obtain a MS at ASU that you’d like to use toward your PhD, avoid this by using the blanket hours to add your credits instead of adding each specific course on the Course Admin page.
A petition populates anytime you add something on your iPOS that is breaking a Graduate College rule. For example, if you try to add more than 6 credits of 400-level coursework to your graduate iPOS, a petition will automatically populate letting you know there is a policy in place, and that your request requires extra approval. Please note that petitions are not commonly approved.
Please note: If you know that you will require special approval for a course substitution or some other circumstance, please do not submit a petition on the “Petitions” tab in iPOS. Let the petition automatically populate by adding your coursework on the “Course Admin” page, then fill out the required information.
If you submitted your iPOS and had it approved, you may then deviate from your plan of study. For instance, if you planned to enroll in 9 research credits in Fall 2020, but you end up actually enrolling in 12 research credits, a red exclamation point will populate next to your 9 research credit hours telling you that course is not found on your transcript. To correct an issue like this, please remove the course with the error by navigating to the “Course Admin” page, selecting the specific course, then clicking the “Remove” button. Afterward, select the red “Add Courses” bar at the top of the Course Admin page, then select “Add from Transcript” and select the correct course you are enrolled in that you’d like to add. You’ll finish by submitting your changes for approval.
The iPOS breaks down degree requirements into sections (i.e., core, electives, research, other, culminating experience, etc.). Not only do you need to add enough coursework to meet the total required hours for the degree (84 for PhD and 30 for MS), but you also need to add the correct number of credit hours per section. For instance, if your program requires 8 core credit hours, you need to make sure you add the correct courses equaling at least 8 credit hours in that section. If you are on the Course Admin page, the category will be listed on the left with the minimum required credit hours in parentheses.
Please note: You cannot exceed the credit hour requirement in the culminating experience section. A PhD requires exactly 12 dissertation credit hours, and a MS requires exactly 6thesis credit hours.
The iPOS does not need to have every single course that you are taking included on it. It needs to include the courses and credit hours required to fulfill degree requirements.
No, if you try to exceed the culminating experience credit hour specification, a petition will populate for you to request an exemption with the Grad College. This is rarely, if ever, approved. To avoid issues altogether, it is highly recommended that you do not enroll in more than the credit hour requirements for the culminating experience. If you have already completed too many thesis or dissertation credits, you may be able to just not include those courses on your iPOS. Otherwise, contact the SOLS Graduate Office at sols.grad@asu.edu to see what can be done.
In order to submit the iPOS for approval, you need to either have only your Chair/Co-Chairs added to the “Faculty Committee” tab in iPOS, or you need to have your full committee added. This means that you will not be able to add your Chair and one other member, for example, while you wait to finalize your remaining two members. In a situation like this, you should submit with just the Chair, then add the rest of your committee later once that is finalized.
Most likely, the individual you are trying to search has either not served on any ASU student committee before, or he/she was given one-time approval only for another student committee. This means that we will need to go through a request and approval process to have the individual added. In order to do so, we will need a CV and date of birth for the individual that would like to be added, then the addition will go through approvals with the Program Director(s), the SOLS Graduate Associate Director, and the Graduate College.
Any faculty member that you attempt to add to your committee must have the appropriate approval in place in order for your committee to be approved by SOLS and the Grad College. If you are an Environmental Life Sciences PhD student adding a faculty member from the College of Health Solutions, for instance, as a member on your committee, that individual needs to have approval to serve as an Environmental Life Sciences Chair, Co-Chair, or member (depending on the specific role you are giving that individual). If the approval is not already in place, we will need a CV and date of birth or ASU ID from the member you would like to add, and this will go through approvals with the Program Director(s), the SOLS Graduate Associate Director, and the Graduate College.