Making course changes
Important information for College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS) Visiting Students on a Study Abroad/Exchange programme about making course changes and the CAHSS Course Change Request Form.
Deadlines for 2023/24 Academic Year
The course change deadlines below are for the current 2023/24 academic year
Students have until the end of Teaching Week 2 in each semester to add or drop courses:
- Full-Year and Semester 1 courses: 12 pm (noon) on Friday, 29 September 2023
- Semester 2 courses: 12 pm (noon) on Friday, 26 January 2024
**Important Information to consider before submitting a course change request**
This form is only for incoming undergraduate visiting students on a Study Abroad/Exchange programme based in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS), or alternatively a College of Science and Engineering (CSE) visiting student requesting a course within CAHSS.
- Course change requests are processed on a first-received, first-processed basis, and there is no guarantee of receiving a place in a specific course.
- All Visiting Students must be enrolled in a full course load of 60 credits per semester (120 credits per academic year). There are very few exceptions to this rule, which you can find on our Course Load & Course Auditing Policy. This means that if you are currently enrolled in 60 credits, you will be required to remove course(s) from your enrolments in order to add additional courses.
- You will only be enrolled to courses for which you meet the academic pre-requisites and the English language requirements. You can find out the specific requirements of a course through the Course Finder.
- You cannot be enrolled in courses if there is a timetable conflict. You can use PATH to build a timetable and see which courses fit together timetable wise. However, please be aware that not all courses shown on PATH is available to visiting students. For visiting students, PATH is only a timetable building tool and is not linked to your actual course enrolments.
- If there are several tutorial group options for a course, you will be automatically allocated to a tutorial group that will fit with your timetable by the Timetabling Department. This allocation will take place at the start of the semester.
- For subject specific exchange students, you are expected to take two-thirds of your credits within the relevant subject area of your exchange agreement. If your course change request does not meet the terms of your exchange agreement, we may have to refuse your request.
- This form cannot be used to request to audit a course.
The Course Change Request Form is available below. Before submitting a course change request, please make sure to review the information about popular subject areas; how to view which courses you are currently enrolled in; and what happens after you submit a course change request.
We do our best to ensure that students are allocated their preferred course choices, but sometimes this is not possible.
The subject areas listed below cannot guarantee access to visiting students who are not on a direct exchange in the subject area, either because these subjects are very popular courses (with limited capacity & strict pre-requisites), or because they have limited study options available for visiting students.
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences:
- Archaeology
- Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Architectural History
- Art
- Classics
- Design
- Education
- English Literature
- Health
- History
- History of Art
- Law
- Music
- Nursing
- Philosophy
- Politics and International Relations
- Psychology
- Sociology and Social Policy
- Sport Science
As spaces are limited on these courses, most students will often be limited to pre-enrol for one or two courses only (depending on the subject and depending on your exchange agreement) and invited to fill any remaining spaces on a first-come, first-served basis once the relevant semester starts.
Additionally, please note that the majority of these subject areas will not be available prior to summer 2023. This is because we do not know yet which courses in these subject areas will have space available for visiting students, and the demand for places is high. Once the official list of courses for 2023/24 is confirmed in summer 2023, we will begin accepting requests for these limited-space courses.
Visiting students who have received an offer to study with us will need to wait until we inform you (via email in summer 2023) that these subject areas have become available. After that time, we will begin accepting requests to enrol in those courses, so you must submit new requests for your preferred courses then. Enrolment will be subject to availability and availability of specific courses cannot be guaranteed.
View Courses via the Applicant Hub. Before a student record has been created, visiting students can view their courses via the Applicant Hub. Instructions on how to view your course enrolments via the Applicant Hub is available in our guide:
View Courses via your Student Hub on MyEd. Once a student record has been created, visiting students can view their courses via the Student Hub on MyEd. Please note that a student record will be created much closer to your programme start date. Instructions on how to view your course enrolments via your Student Hub on MyEd is available in our guide:
After submitting a request, you will be contacted by the Visiting Student Office by email to update you on your course change request. We typically respond to all course change requests within 5 business days.
If you are requesting courses based in the College of Science & Engineering (CSE), it may take longer to respond to your request as we would need to check your eligibility with our colleagues based in CSE. Please note that since you are joining the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS), you can take no more than 20 credits in subject areas from the College of Science & Engineering (CSE).
Once your course change request has been processed, you will need to submit a separate course change request if you would like to make any further changes to your courses.
Once you have reviewed the information above, please fill out the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Course Change Request Form completely and accurately. We will be unable to process your course change request if you provide incomplete or incorrect information. To help you complete the form, please read our Course Change Request Guide:
Links to the Course Change Request Form:
CAHSS Course Change Request Form
DIRECT URL LINK: https://edin.ac/35hjeMK
Auditing is a process where students take an extra course, in addition to their normal course load, for no credit. They would be enrolled in the course as 'Class Only'. Students at the University of Edinburgh generally do not audit courses, so it is often not possible to do so.
If you wish to seek permission to audit a course, you must request this by contacting the Visiting Student Office directly (CAHSSVisitingStudents@ed.ac.uk), and please bear in mind the following:
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You must enrol in a full courseload (60 credits per semester) aside from your audited course.
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You cannot audit more than one 20-credit course per semester.
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Your audited course will not show on your UoE transcript, and you will get no credit or grade for it.
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You cannot audit any course that you are not academically qualified to take, that is unavailable to visiting students, or that is already full.
If you would like us to re-evaluate your eligibility or have any questions about the courses you can take, please email us at CAHSSVisitingStudents@ed.ac.uk.