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6-Drop Rule

In accordance with Texas Education Code, Section 51.907, any student who began college for the first time as a freshman in Fall 2007 or thereafter may not drop more than six courses during their entire undergraduate career. This includes courses dropped at another 2-year or 4-year Texas public college or university. For purposes of this rule, a dropped course is any course that is dropped after the published Census Date (See Academic Calendar located at http://www.uttyler.edu/calendar/ for the date).

Exceptions to the 6-drop rule include, but are not limited to, the following:

  1. totally withdrawing from the university;
  2. being administratively dropped from a course by an instructor or the university;
  3. dropping a course for a provable illness or disability, for care for a sick or injured person, or for a death in the immediate family or a person who has a sufficiently close relationship to the student;
  4. dropping a course for documented change of work schedule;
  5. dropping a course for active duty service with the U.S. armed forces or Texas National Guard;
  6. dropping a course that does not carry college-level credit such as a zero-credit course or a developmental education course; 
  7. dropping courses taken as required co-requisites such as a lecture class with a required laboratory. In such cases the lecture and lab are counted as one drop when dropped at the same time;
  8. As required by HB 2223, students are required to be concurrently enrolled in their developmental education course and the corresponding academic courses. Students cannot drop one of these courses. If a drop occurs, the student must drop both the developmental education course and corresponding academic course.

Petitions for exemptions must be submitted to enroll@uttyler.edu or the One-Stop Service Center and accompanied by documentation of the extenuating circumstances beyond performance in the course. Please contact the One-Stop Service Center if you have any questions.

A grade of “Q” will appear on the official transcripts of any student who has dropped a course where an exemption or exception was granted; this takes the place of the standard “W” grade. All Texas institutions are required to honor the exemptions and exceptions granted by a transferring institution. Procedures for implementing the law vary among institutions. Therefore, students have an obligation to keep track of the number of non-exempted dropped courses across all institutions to ensure that they do not exceed the six dropped courses limit.