Academic Year 2024-2025

7 Subjects: IAP Subjects

  • 7.1 General Guidelines

    Subjects offered for credit during IAP are treated exactly like subjects offered for credit during regular terms. CoC approves them on the same basis and following the same procedures.

    • Subjects offered regularly during IAP should be listed in the MIT Catalog and submitted in accordance with catalog deadlines. Each IAP subject offered for credit must have a number that has been approved by the CoC.

    • If a subject is offered both during IAP and one of the regular terms, the same number of units must be awarded and grading must be done on the same basis (i.e., letter grades or P/D/F) as approved for that subject number. If the number of units or grading policy differs, the subjects must be submitted to the CoC separately with different numbers, titles, and descriptions.

    • Any one-time or periodic IAP subject offered for credit that is not covered by existing subject numbers must be assigned a special subject number. If an IAP subject has been offered twice under a special subject number and the department wants to continue to offer it in subsequent years, a proposal must be submitted to the CoC to establish a permanent listing with a regular subject number, title, and description.

    • A subject can be graded P/D/F during IAP only if it has been approved with P/D/F grading.

  • 7.2 Required Subjects Offered Only in IAP

    As voted by the Faculty, a department may offer up to 12 units of its required departmental subjects as an IAP-only offering. Proposals for these subjects will be reviewed on an individual basis and approved by CoC for academic content.

    Required subjects offered only during IAP must adhere to the following guidelines:

    1. Departments may require no more than 12 units of their undergraduate programs to be completed during a single IAP.
    2. If a combination of subjects is required, the subjects must be scheduled so that a student may complete all of the subjects in a single IAP. An aggregate of no more than 12 IAP-only units may be required.
    3. There must be flexibility in scheduling the year in which students must take an IAP-only requirement. This implies that a viable alternative must exist for IAP-only subjects which are prerequisites for other subjects, so students can miss a particular IAP without penalty.
    4. Required subjects offered only during IAP must not be created simply by compressing regular-term subjects. Subjects should be appropriate to the intensive schedule and unique pedagogical opportunities offered by IAP.
    5. Departments are advised to prepare explicit contingency plans in case members of the planned teaching staff suddenly become unavailable.

    The total credit a student can earn during IAP is 12 units. Credit units for IAP work, whether in regular or special subjects, must be awarded on the same basis as in a regular term as defined by the Faculty Regulations, i.e., "one unit of credit represents approximately one hour per week of lecture, exercise, or preparation for one term."  During IAP, this means a total of approximately 14 hours per unit of credit.