Registration, Courses, and Advising

To ensure that our students in all programs are completing courses in the best sequence for their degree program, students will be pre-registered by the Heinz Academic & Advising Services (HAAS) office for their first semester of courses. HAAS will begin to register students in the month prior to their start date. This schedule is not absolute. Your schedule may not be final  prior to Heinz College Orientation week.

Incoming students who are part of this pre-registration process will have a registration hold applied to their record and will be required to meet with their academic advisor within the month of August.  This is a standard process applied to all students to ensure that schedules can be created and finalized without disruption.

To make sure that the pre-registration process runs smoothly, do not make any changes to your schedule prior to meeting with your academic advisor. Please do not attempt to add or drop any courses (or sections/times of courses) as the pre-registration process is on-going.  If you make changes, you may lose your seat in a required course and it will slow down the registration process for all incoming students.

This pre-registration information does not apply to:

• Exchange Students - review your registration process here: International Exchange Student Page
• CMU and Chatham AMP Students - Work with both advisors to finalize your course schedule prior to August.

Students are not pre-registered at the same time.  Please do not worry if another incoming student has a full schedule and you do not see courses in your schedule. Pre-registration is an ongoing process that takes time.  Pre-registration is considered complete one week prior to the start of classes. HAAS may make changes to your schedule up until this point. Depending upon your degree program (and results of the placement exams or exemption), you may have room in your schedule to add elective courses after the pre-registration process has been completed. For students who wish to secure a part-time job, or settle daycare arrangements, etc, you should anticipate that your first semester schedule will be finalized by the end of Heinz Orientation Week.  You will be able to access your schedule through Student information Online: SIO.

Full-time Heinz students will have the opportunity to take placement and exemption exams prior to the start of the fall semester, which offer you the opportunity to place into a higher section of a course or fully exempt a required course. 

This is your only opportunity to sit for these exams.  For courses that offer exemption exams, you must sit for the exam to earn an exemption.  There are no options to exempt those courses after your program begins.  For the exam schedule and details regarding available exams for your degree program, please visit:  Placement Exam Information.

For required courses that do not offer an exemption or placement exam during orientation, students may petition to request an exemption.  Exemption petitions for incoming students will be available during the month prior to the start of the fall semester.  More information can be found here.

You will have a session with your program and a meeting with your Academic Advisor. These sessions are meant to clarify course requirements and expectations.

To view your program's curriculum, please visit one of the following sites:

• AIM
• MISM 16-Month
• MISM 12-Month
• MISM-BIDA and MISM-BIDA 12-Month
• MSISPM
• MSPPM
• MSPPM - DC
• MSPPM - DA
• MAM
• MEIM
• MSHCA

• Current Student Resource Page:  visit this page for Heinz College and degree program handbooks; forms/petitions; resources for employment, student organizations, computing services; and much more!
• Heinz College Academic Calendar:  this calendar includes important dates and deadlines specific to Heinz College courses and students.
• Heinz College Full Course Catalog with course descriptions (Please NOTE: You will be pre-registered for your first semester.)
• Heinz College Academic & Advising Services

• Credits vs Units:  Carnegie Mellon measures coursework in terms of "units" rather than "credits”. A full semester long course is typically 12 units (which is equivalent to 3 - 4 credits of graduate work at other universities), and implies that you can expect to devote an average of 12 hours per week to the course. We also offer half-semester long classes, termed a "mini" that is 6 units. You can still expect to devote an average of 12 hours per week to these courses. A normal course load varies by degree program but is between 48-60 units. Please visit your program's handbook for additional details.  Program handbooks can be found here.
• CMU Schedule of Classes legend:  Please reference this guide for a summary of how minis versus full semester courses are scheduled, and how to decipher these courses on your schedule.

In the past, students have expressed an interest in purchasing textbooks prior to their arrival at Carnegie Mellon. We do not recommend that you do this for a number of reasons. First, faculty can change the edition of the textbook they use at the last minute, requiring you to purchase a new book once you arrive. Second, we sometimes have different faculty members teaching different sections of the same course. They do not always use the same text.

We've factored the purchase of books into the “Estimated Cost of Attendance” for each degree program offered by the Heinz College. As you will see from the breakdown of expenses, the cost for books is in addition to tuition fees and other expenses. We advise that you use these numbers when planning your expenses.