All graduate students who receive merit-based graduate assistantships and fellowships must be full-time students in the term in which they receive the aid. For assistantships, full-time status can be achieved by registering for a minimum of 7 credit hours or by taking six or fewer credits of course work plus the appropriate continuous enrollment course, such as Graduate Assistant Teaching, Graduate Assistant Research or Graduate Fellowship, depending on the award received. These zero-credit continuous enrollment courses carry the status of full-time when combined with six or fewer credits of course work.

The following course numbers are used in conjunction with the department acronym:

• Graduate Fellowship (full-time, FT) = 9974
• Graduate Assistant Teaching (full-time, FT) = 9975
• Graduate Assistant Research (full-time, FT) = 9976

Students may use their assistantship funding to pay for Graduate Assistant Teaching, Graduate Assistant Research or Graduate Fellowship course fees. It is not required that all TAs and RAs be registered for one of these continuation courses; if a student already meets full-time status based on course work, then these continuation courses need not be used to obtain full-time status. 

Graduate students who receive merit-based scholarships only from the Graduate School are not required to be registered full time. 

If teaching and research assistants and recipients of scholarships or fellowships need continuous enrollment, they must register for the appropriate continuation course. These courses are graded on an SNC/UNC basis. Registration for a continuation course requires that a student meet with their adviser (and director of graduate studies or chair if required by departmental policy). The student is issued a permission number for the appropriate course by their department. The student registers themselves for the course on CheckMarq. The student must register on CheckMarq for the continuous enrollment course on or before the deadline to Add/Drop, as per the Graduate Academic Calendar. Enrollment Information may not be accurate for students who are not registered by the deadline to Add/Drop and may affect requests for information provided through the Office of the Registrar (such as enrollment verification requests from lending institutions, insurance companies, etc.).