Registration and Course Enrollment

Course Enrollment

Harvard Kennedy School course enrollment process consists of four phases - an online enrollment period, a single-round of bidding for oversubscribed courses, an online add/drop period, and finally an off-line or paper add/drop period.  A summary of the phases is presented here.  Please refer to the Academic Calendar and Key Dates for the specific semester's dates and deadlines.

Please note that all deadlines will be strictly enforced.

Online Enrollment

In the HKS system, a one-semester course earns one credit; a module earns a half credit. During the online enrollment period students may request up to five credits (including cross-registered and reading and research courses) that they wish to take on the SMART online enrollment system, and may change their selections at any time during the online enrollment period.

First year MPP and MPA/ID students will be pre-enrolled in their core courses; if students in other programs wish to enroll in core courses, they need to wait until the paper add/drop period.

Permission of instructor courses can be viewed on SMART, but students cannot enroll via SMART. Students need to request permission of the instructor via the paper add/drop form during the paper add/drop period.

Each course will have an enrollment capacity, usually determined by the size of the classroom, although some enrollment capacities may be set, with the approval of the Academic Dean, for pedagogical reasons. Courses that are requested by more HKS students than capacity allows will be classified as “oversubscribed” courses.

Oversubscribed courses will then go to the bidding process.  Students who have selected courses that are not oversubscribed will automatically be enrolled in those courses.

The enrollment request numbers in each oversubscribed class will be available from the Office of the Registrar prior to the opening of bidding. Students will also be able to view previous years' clearing prices for oversubscribed classes.

Shopping Days

Harvard Kennedy School uses the two days prior to the beginning of term for “Shopping Days" for students to preview course the want to take.  These mini-meetings of courses provide an opportunity for faculty to disseminate information about how they will run the course, (syllabus, required participation, grading, exams, etc.) and for students to ask questions about the course, which helps students make their course selections. The shopping meeting is merely descriptive of the course as a whole; it is not substantive and does not replace the first regularly scheduled class meeting.

Shopping meetings last for an half hour. The Shopping schedule can be found online at the beginning of each term.  Courses generally shop at the same time slot and in the same room as that where their course will normally meet.  Most MPA/ID1 and MPP1 courses do not shop but do hold their first real course meetings during Shopping Days. Period 2 and Period 4 modules do not shop at the beginning of their respective terms.