Harvard students can cross register for courses at MIT. The following pages can be useful in how to do so:
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Registrar’s office cross-registration dates and overview for Harvard College Students. Please note that the Harvard Course Catalog places a space in MIT course numbers before the decimal–e.g. “6 .5900”
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Please note that MIT cross-registration does not open until Add-drop, so you cannot register for MIT courses during prior-term registration. For the Fall this means you cross-register in August, and for the Spring in January.
You should also talk to your resident dean to make sure the process goes smoothly.
Courses for concentration requirements are approved on an individual basis but some that have been approved are listed our our course tags table.
If you want to petition for concentration credit for a course that is not listed in the table and is not MIT 6.3900, email cs-dus@seas.harvard.edu with the syllabus of the course, any other information, and what requirement would you like it to count for (e.g., elective, breadth, theory, math, etc.). Please leave up to two weeks for the DUS team to make a decision in consultation with our colleagues. If the petition is approved then you should submit an updated plan of study and the form above.
MIT 6.3900 ordinarily does not count for Harvard CS concentration credit. We consider petitions for concentration credit for it from students who both have a conflict with whatever subset of CS 1810 and CS 1820 are offered in the same semester and will, in the following semester, be in some course or already-confirmed research opportunity which requires an intro to machine learning. Contact the CS advising team if you want to make such a petition. (Not having the prerequisite probability knowledge for CS 1810/1820 is not a sufficient reason for CS concentration credit for MIT 6.3900; we recommend that you learn that probability first (e.g. from Stat 110 or ES 150). A generally busy schedule (absent a direct conflict with CS 1810/1820) is also not a sufficient reason for CS concentration credit for MIT 6.3900.)
The grades for cross registered courses are included in the transcript, and if they are used for concentration credit then they are used in calculating the concentration GPA as well. Starting July 1, 2024, courses can no longer be peitioned to count towards your overall GPA. More information on the grading policy of cross-registered courses is available in the Handbook.
A tip on getting to MIT: The LMA M2 shuttle is free with a Harvard ID. You can also use the T (red line), a bus (the MBTA 1), or a Blue Bike.