guidelines to fill POS

• last updated: Apr. 2022

Plans of Study (POS) are regularly rejected by the OGE which creates undue burden on the student, advisor, math department staff, and OGE staff. To minimize the occurrence of trivial rejections, you must proceed through the following checklist prior to submitting any POS to your advisor for signature.

(0) Verify that your POS agrees with your transcript (modulo point (3a) below). This means the course number, the course name, the semester, and the number of credits must agree for any course listed on your POS that you have already taken or are currently taking.

(1) Verify that you have used the current version of the POS.  This is a fillable pdf, and you should enter your classes using this capability (i.e. do not print the form and fill in by hand). The current version of the POS is available on the OGE website:

https://info.rpi.edu/academic-progress/forms-publications-policies

(2) Fill in the names of the faculty members who will sign, and include estimated dates that they will sign it.

(3) The POS must follow the regulations in the catalog for general PhD programs and for the math PhD program. The 2021-22 catalog entries are here:

http://catalog.rpi.edu/content.php?catoid=22&navoid=537#Doct_Degr

http://catalog.rpi.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=22&poid=5449&returnto=542

             (a) The POS must contain exactly 72 credits. You will take more than 72 credits during your time at RPI, so you don’t need to apply all credits from all courses you take. For example, you will probably take 9-15 dissertation credits per semester towards the end of your program, but you only need to list a few such credits on your POS. In addition, you can choose to apply only part of a course to your POS, e.g. you may apply 1-4 credits from a 4 credit course.

             (b) The POS should contain at least 15 dissertation credits (MATH-9990), and no more than 30.

             (c) You should avoid listing more than 1 semester with just 1 dissertation credit and nothing else. The OGE allows a POS to list no credits for the last few semesters, if all other requirements are met.

             (d) Your plan of study must contain at least one outside course. This must not be cross-listed as MATP or MATH, must be at the graduate level, and must be for 3 or 4 credits.

             (e) Your plan of study must contain at least six 4-credit graduate MATH and/or MATP courses.

             (f) You can apply reading courses to your POS. Note that you cannot register for a reading course within SIS, you must complete a form in conjunction with the course supervisor.