Five College Registration Policies

For Five College Students Interested in Taking a Course at Mount Holyoke College

Registering for Mount Holyoke Courses
You must register for a Mount Holyoke course according to your home registrar’s procedures and policies.  They will notify us of your request which we will process if possible or, in the case of a closed class, we will notify your home registrar so that they can contact you.

If you are not allowed to register for a course during the registration period in November/April due to the course being closed, you are welcome to attend the first class meeting and talk to the professor to see if you can gain admission to the class.  If the instructor will allow you to register, you must supply your home institution with whatever form of permission your registrar’s office requires.

Students who are unable to attend the first class meeting and wish to be considered for a space in the course should contact the instructor directly prior to the start of classes. Instructors' email addresses can be found in the Mount Holyoke College Directory.

All courses require instructor permission before registration during the Add/Drop periods in September and January.

Mount Holyoke Calendar
Mount Holyoke classes are rarely cancelled because of poor weather conditions. You may consult the Mount Holyoke College General Announcement Line (413-538-2330) for current information on delayed College openings, early closings, or other events such as Mountain Day.

You should check the Mount Holyoke Academic Calendar, so that you are aware of any holidays or other schedule differences between Mount Holyoke's calendar and your home campus'.

End of the Semester
Only a Mount Holyoke class dean may authorize an extension for any reason beyond the end of the final examination period. Any Five College student who, for reasons of illness, emergency or extenuating personal circumstances, cannot complete his/her work by the end of the semester must request an extension through the Mount Holyoke College academic deans’ office. In cases of illness, the academic dean may request the student to obtain documentation from the Health Service at the student's home campus.

Final examinations at Mount Holyoke College are primarily self-scheduled, meaning that you may decide in which exam period to take the final during the examination days at the end of the semester. Only courses whose final exams involve slides, dictation or recordings are not self-scheduled and instead are assigned a set date and time for their exam. You must bring your student ID card from your home school with you to the examination center to take any exam; without an ID, you will not be allowed to take your final examination.  All students should be aware that they are not permitted to complete examinations early and are not permitted to make special arrangements with faculty to complete exams outside the examination period. When making your end-of the-semester travel arrangements, be sure your plans do not conflict with the MHC examination schedule. Exam schedule (PDF) information is posted on the Registrar’s Web site by mid-semester.

Your final grade in any MHC course will be forwarded to your home registrar after the instructor has submitted grades for the entire course.  You should check for your MHC grade where you usually look for grades from your home school.

If you register for a Mount Holyoke course that uses ella, you must request an MHC guest account so that you may be listed, under an MHC account name, on the ella roster for the course.  ella will then let you access the course’s online site.  To request an MHC account, read and complete a brief online form as soon as possible after you receive approval to register for the MHC course. Within twenty-four hours (Monday-Friday), your MHC guest account will be emailed to you.  Be sure to login at least once to the accompanying MHC email account to set forwarding, so that MHC email sent you will be forwarded to whatever email address you use frequently. 

Once you have received your MHC guest account, if you are already officially registered for the MHC course, you will be automatically added to the course’s ella roster and should be able to login to ella immediately.   If the course has already begun and you have not fully completed registration procedures (and thus do not appear on your instructor’s official course roster yet), send your instructor an email including your MHC account name (not your password) and request that s/he manually add you to the course’s ella roster.  You can not be added to ella until you have an MHC account name; not all ella features will work for you unless you’re listed with an MHC account.