Undergraduate Academic Advising

Major Advising

A student’s faculty adviser in their major is an important part of their academic experience. The information below includes information and resources to support and guide you as you advise students.

Advising Timeline

All students are assigned an enrollment window, and you should hold your advising session before their window opens. If your advisee doesn’t respond to you until after their window has passed, still advise them as soon as possible but make sure they know that they will have to wait until Open Enrollment to enroll in classes.

Advising Sessions

Plan to meet with each advisee for 20-30 minutes. In your sessions, you may want to cover the following topics:

What have they already taken and what general education gaps remain?
- The Degree Audit in YES can help answer these questions.
- For students taking AXLE: students can complete the AXLE Worksheet to help them plan. You may want to review the AXLE requirements so you are familiar with them.
- For students taking the College Core: students can complete the College Core Checklist to help them plan. You may want to review the College Core requirements so you are familiar with them.
What do they need to take to achieve class standing at the end of the year?
- Review the requirements for junior and senior class standing (see the Semester requirements and class standing section).
What is an appropriate course load to achieve class standing?
Do they need to take a Writing course? (AXLE students)
Do they need to complete the foreign language requirement?

Note that a student is placed on academic probation if:

They fail to make class standing (in which case they will be required to come to summer school to make up their deficiency).
They complete fewer than 12 credit hours per semester or earn less than a 1.5 GPA.

Major Requirements

All majors, both interdisciplinary and disciplinary, require 24 unique credit hours, regardless of overall number of hours required for the major. The remaining credit hours of a major may be double-counted toward other majors or minors, if allowed by the involved departments or programs. This policy applies only to majors and does not change the 15 unique credit hour rule in place for minors or rules for the 48 credit hour self-designed major.

General Student Academics

A&S College Core (for students entering Fall 2025 and later)

AXLE (for students entering before Fall 2025)

FAQs

See College Core FAQs for faculty.

I am going on sabbatical for a year, so my advisees will need to be reassigned. How can I get those changes made?

Major adviser reassignments will need to come directly from your department. Please send notification of those changes to arts-sci-records@vanderbilt.edu.
One of my advisees’ major audits shows Not Satisfied. A substitution will satisfy the missing requirement, allowing for completion of the major. To whom should notification of the substitution be sent?

Notification of a variance in major requirements must come directly from the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the major department.
One of my advisees’ AXLE audit is not showing a class to satisfy a requirement that the Undergraduate Catalog says it should satisfy. Who can fix this?

Please direct your advisee to the Office of Academic Services at arts-sci-records@vanderbilt.edu.
Is there a place where I can direct advisees with general questions about declaring a major/minor, adding/dropping a class, taking a class on a pass/fail basis, etc.?

Yes. The Student Policies and Procedures section of our website contains all of this information and much more, clearly organized by topic. For easy access, students may find the following specific pages helpful: declaring majors & minors and enrollment and registration.
How can students request a special course load (overload or underload)?

View the process students must follow to request a special course load (view the Course load section).
How do students audit a course?

View the process students must follow to audit a class (view the Auditing a class section).
How do students enroll in a course on a pass/fail basis?

View the process students must follow to enroll in a class pass/fail (view the Pass/fail section)
How can a student add, drop, or edit a major/minor?

View the process students must follow to declare a major or minor.
Can I make changes to a student’s degree audit?
Yes. Please send change requests to arts-sci-variances@vanderbilt.edu and note the following guidelines:
1. Each major must have 24 unique hours; each minor must have 15 unique hours.
2. For a course to be unique to a major or minor, it must fulfill both of these conditions:
  - It must count toward a specific requirement in that major (e.g., core, concentration, or electives in MHS); it cannot simply appear in the GPA.
  - It must not count toward a specific requirement in another major or minor.