Standards of Academic Progress

To maintain satisfactory academic progress at MIU, students must meet the standards listed below, evaluated at the end of each semester. Please be sure to see the section below on consequences of not meeting these standards

Graduate degree

You must earn a “quality grade” in all the courses you take each semester. (100% Quality Rate)

• “Quality grades” are P, PH, or B (3.0 grade points) or higher.
• We don’t include grades of W, WH, or AU.
• The lower grade of a repeated course is excluded.
• CUM GPA above 3.0 with no NP grades also meets the standard

If you don’t meet this standard, you’re placed on Academic Warning for your next semester. You must earn quality grades in all your courses during that Warning semester. (See further detail below.)

Undergraduate degree

Undergraduate students have three standards to meet:

Standard #1 — Completion Rate (cumulative)

You must earn credit in ⅔ of the course credits you attempt. Here’s how we calculate that:

• We start by adding up the number of credits you’ve earned in your undergraduate degree at MIU and in accepted transfer credits. Earned credits include credits for all courses for which you’ve received any of these grades: A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, P. We do not include courses you’ve repeated for a higher grade (for repeated courses, we count only the higher grade as “earned”). We do not count approved withdrawals (W, WH) as Earned.
• Next, we add up the number of credits you’ve attempted and in transfer credits. Attempted credits include credits for all the courses for which you’ve received a grade (except PW). We include Development of Consciousness course credits, credits for the lower grades of repeated courses (marked as repeated on transcripts), and approved withdrawals (W, WH) as Attempted. Then we divide the number of credits you’ve earned by the number you’ve attempted.
• As you can see, we include accepted transfer credits as both Earned and Attempted.

Standard #2 — Quality Rate (cumulative)

You must earn a satisfactory quality grade in 3/4 of the courses you take, counted in terms of credits. The Quality Rate is a bit more rigorous than the Completion Rate. Here’s how we calculate it:

• We take the credits you’ve earned and then exclude transfer credits and credits for MIU courses with the C-minus grade. These are your Adjusted Earned Credits.
• Next, we take the credits you’ve attempted and then exclude transfer credit, courses you’ve repeated for a higher grade, and credits for which you’ve received W, WH, and AU grades. These are your Adjusted Attempted Credits.
• Then we divide the number of Adjusted Earned Credits by the number of Adjusted Attempted Credits.
• The result is your Quality Rate.
• The Quality Rate Standard may also be met if the GPA is 2.0 or higher and there are no NP grades.

Standard #3 — Maximum Timeframe for Completion (Attempted Credits)

You may attempt a maximum of 192 credits en route to earning the 128 credits you need to graduate. This includes transfer credits and credits toward a double major. If you reach 174 attempted credits, you will be placed on Academic Warning for the next semester.

Why MIU uses “Quality Rate”

We use Quality Rate as an alternative to GPA, the traditional quality-related measure, because some MIU courses use narrative evaluation with P/NP grading. In undergraduate courses, a “P” grade is equivalent to a “C” letter grade (2.0 grade point) or higher.* In graduate courses, a “P” grade is equivalent to a letter grade of “B” or higher.

Consequences of not meeting these standards

Students not meeting any one of these standards are placed on “Academic Warning” for that standard for the following semester.

Undergraduate students not meeting Standards 1 or 2 by the end of the Academic Warning semester will no longer be eligible to attend the University.

Undergraduate students not meeting Standard 3 — students who have attempted 192 units and still have not graduated — are no longer eligible for financial aid.

NOTE – Students on Academic Warning are not eligible for Rotating University courses, directed studies, or internships (except when required by the department for graduation). This is so that they can focus maximum time and attention on meeting the standard they have not met.

Appeal, probation, loss of aid, eligibility to attend, and reinstatement

If students who are placed on Academic Warning do not meet the relevant standard during that semester, they lose their eligibility to continue at MIU. Students who wish to appeal must submit the appeal in writing to the MIU Administrator for Satisfactory Academic Progress.

Appeals will be granted only if students can demonstrate that the circumstance leading to their inability to meet any one of these standards was beyond their control and is unlikely to occur again.

If the appeal is granted, students will be placed on Academic Probation for the following semester. They will still be eligible for financial aid. But they must meet the standard by the end of that semester.

The Academic Standards Committee may specify a longer probation period for students with a specified academic plan to correct the problem — for example, distance education students whose course load requires more time to rectify the problem.

Students may be reinstated after all standards applicable to their degree level have satisfactorily been met. For example, a student with an approved Late Work Contract may meet the applicable standard by completing the late work. Or a student may earn credit at another institution and thereby demonstrate that the difficulty causing the earlier deficiency has now been corrected.

*In the five years prior to implementing our Quality Rate, all undergraduate students with a 75% Quality Rate achieved a 2.0 or higher GPA, and the average undergraduate GPA was 3.51.