Bidding Process

Students who have selected an oversubscribed class during online enrollment will be informed via email that they have the option to bid. Students are given an endowment of points per academic year to use during the bidding process. The endowment is determined by a student’s expected year of graduation and program. Please see the section on point allocations for more information.

Students may use their points to bid on any oversubscribed class that they requested during online enrollment, bidding as many or few points as they see fit. Total points bid on all courses within one term cannot exceed the student’s point allocation or 1000 points.

Students learn the results of the bidding process by checking their course schedules on SMART shortly before the opening of online add/drop. Students accepted into an oversubscribed class will only be charged the clearing price (the lowest bid offered by a student admitted to the class minus one). The clearing prices for each class will be posted as soon as the bidding process is completed. Points will be refunded to students who overbid and may be used over the rest of the year.

In the case of a bidding point tie, a computer-generated lottery will determine the enrollees from among those bidders who are tied.  This occurs when students bid greater than the clearing price, but were not admitted to the clas.  For example, suppose that there are 50 seats in a course, and that 45 students bid 101 or greater, and 10 students bid 100. In this case, the students who bid 101 or greater will be admitted, and there will be a lottery to determine which 5 of the 10 students who bid 100 will get into the course. The clearing price for this course will be 100 - 1 = 99 points. Note, however, that no student actually bidding 99 points was admitted to the course. Please also refer to other examples of the possible bidding scenarios (links to a pdf).

Students who bid for oversubscribed classes that do not fill with bidders will be enrolled and charged one point. These classes will be available to add during the paper add/drop period. (The class will be blocked during online add/drop.)

Students retain the points they bid for a class when they do not get in it. However, points are not refunded when a student bid for a class, is accepted into it and subsequently drops it. Students do not carry over unused points from year to year, with the exception of combined degree students. Combined degree students are assigned their points in a lump sum when they first attend Harvard Kennedy School, while non-combined degree students are assigned new points each year in their program.

Some MPP policy areas of concentration (PACs) have required introductory courses. Second-year MPP students who have declared one of these concentrations, but have not completed the required course in question, will be admitted to that introductory course without bidding.