Academic Policies
Off-Campus Study should be academically engaging and reflect a liberal arts curriculum. To ensure that students obtain credit towards their undergraduate degree, students must adhere to academic policies while participating in off-campus study; it is the students' responsibility to be familiar with the following policies.
Students studying in Granada, Spain.
Credit:
- Make sure you take enough credits at your host institution to transfer to a full semester/year at Bowdoin. (Tip: this may vary greatly so pay close attention to what a full credit load is at your chosen institution!)
- A maximum of 4 credits per semester or 8 credits per year is transferable.
- Take classes only in the liberal arts. (Tip: You cannot take non-liberal arts subjects like business, marketing, communications, linguistics, sports, physical education, agriculture, or internships.)
- Credit will not be awarded for classes that cover material already learned at Bowdoin.
Grades:
- Students are responsible to be familiar with their respective program or university abroad’s policies regarding grade conversion to U.S. letter grades.
- Classes must be taken for a letter grade.
- A minimum grade of C- (or the equivalent) must be earned.
- Grades earned away will not be calculated in the Bowdoin GPA.
Additional Policies:
- All classes must be submitted to OCS for general approval within the first week of on-site course registration through submission of course notification forms.
- Final exams must be taken if required of host-country students and open to visiting students; alternative forms of assessment are not acceptable.
- Distribution and division requirements must be fulfilled at Bowdoin.
- If it is a required component of the on-site academic program, students can earn transfer credit for an independent study (e.g. independent study, directed research, independent research, research assistantship).
- If it is an elective component of the on-site academic program and the student has obtained appropriate Bowdoin faculty provisional credit approval on the OCS Course Exercise sheet from, students may earn transfer credit for independent study (e.g. independent study, directed research, independent research, research assistantship).
- Bowdoin does not award credit for internships, with very few exceptions. Students who take an internship may take it as an overload (with the program's permission); in some cases, the experience forms the foundation for an independent study at Bowdoin. Occasionally students majoring in a foreign language may be allowed to take a maximum of one internship for major or minor credit, provided that the work of the internship is in the foreign language and prior authorization is obtained from the appropriate language department at Bowdoin. Students who take the American University Washington Semester internship must upon return submit a substantial research paper to Professor Janet Martin for approval; failure to submit the research paper will result in no credit at all for the entire semester.