CUNY BA students who wish to take a course at a CUNY school other than their home college will need to file for an ePermit. Once an ePermit is approved, students will be assigned an enrollment date at the host college and must register for the course in CUNYfirst.
Tuition for ePermits is billed by the home college and typically appears as CUNY BA- Permit and the corresponding number of credits.
Students who are in their first semester at their home college, do not yet have a GPA or have a GPA below 2.0, will not be able to submit ePermits through CUNYfirst. In such cases students can request a paper permit from their home college which can be scanned and emailed to CUNY BA to be signed.
A negative service indicator at your home college will prevent you from being eligible for an ePermit.
A separate ePermit should be submitted for each course; ePermits containing multiple courses will be rejected.
Please note that in the following examples Hunter College is the ‘home college’ and Brooklyn College is the ‘host college’ where the student is applying to take a course.
- The system can be accessed by logging in to CUNYfirst, entering your Student Center and selecting the Academic Records tile, then select the ‘ePermit’ option on the left navigation menu:
- Next you will select the term at your home college for which you wish to create an ePermit (note that you may see another school you are attending appear here but should always select your home college):
- On the same screen, you will need to select the type of permit you wish to create. If the ePermit is for a course that has an equivalent at your home college, you will select ‘add ePermit with Equivalent Courses’ and follow this set of instructions; if your course does not have an equivalent at your home college please skip ahead to number 8 for instructions.
- When you select ‘add ePermit with Equivalent Courses’ and click the continue button, you will be brought to the course catalog where you should select your home college as the institution on the dropdown menu:
Next you will select the home college equivalent of the course you wish to take at another school:
- After making your course selection you will see the Course Detail screen where you will need to click on the ‘fetch equivalent CUNY courses’ button:
- Now you will see a list of the schools that offer an equivalent course. You should check off the box in the ‘Request ePermit’ column for the course/school that you want to create an ePermit for and click on the ‘epermit form’ button below:
- On the ePermit form screen, you should select ‘CUNY Baccalaureate’ from the ‘Permit Type’ menu. (Note that this is where you have an option to select ‘Winter’ if this is for a winter session course.) Then click the submit button to submit your ePermit.
- If you are creating an ePermit for a course that does not have an equivalent at your home college, please select ‘add ePermit’ and click the continue button:
- You will get an ePermit form where you will need to select ‘CUNY Baccalaureate’ on the ‘Permit Type’ menu:
- Next you will use the drop-down menus to complete the permit form, selecting the college offering the course you would like to take, your ‘career,’ which is ‘Undergraduate,’ the subject and catalog number of your course. Once you have made these selections click the submit button.
To check the status of your ePermits, go back to the ‘Select Term’ screen and use the ‘Search ePermit’ option. You will be able to see a list of all ePermits and their current status. This is where you can keep track of approval, as the new system does not send emails to alert you about approved ePermits:
If you wish to cancel a permit, you can select it on this screen (above) and use the cancel button.
Once your ePermit is approved, you should see an enrollment appointment for the host college appear in CUNYfirst within a five business days.
Graduate Courses, Independent Study, Internships, Study Abroad, & School of Professional Studies
- For CUNY Baccalaureate to approve your request for a graduate-level course, you must have at least a 3.0 GPA overall and no incompletes, and your area of concentration form must have already been approved. You must email the CUNY BA Academic Director, asking for permission and providing him with written approval from graduate department or the professor teaching the class. There may be additional rules governing graduate courses at the colleges. Also: graduate courses taken for an undergraduate degree cannot ordinarily be applied later to a graduate degree.
- Students who have gotten prior approval from a faculty member for an independent study or internship should include these details in the “Comments to Approvers” box.
- If you are registering for study abroad via E-Permit, you are responsible for making sure that the specific courses you plan to take will transfer back to the host college. Note that in most cases, courses will transfer back with “CR” grades, not actual letter grades. (This is not a problem for CUNY BA.)
- Note that all courses offered through the School of Professional Studies are listed under the Online Baccalaureate (including regular classroom courses that are not part of the Online degree)
- CUNY BA students taking courses at the Graduate Center should request network accounts by filling out an “Account Request Form” at the Graduate Center help desk, for access to GC computers and printing.
- After completing Graduate Center courses, students are responsible for having the Graduate Center send official transcripts to their home colleges for financial aid purposes. There is no charge to request a transcript be sent from one CUNY school to another.
CUNY BA and Registering on Permit – University Standards
CUNY BA students are pursuing interdisciplinary or otherwise unique, individualized University-wide degrees. Accordingly, listed below are a few standard rules concerning CUNY BA students and ePermits:
*Students are not required to have course equivalencies for classes they want to take on permit.
*ePermits from CUNY BA students do not require faculty approval; only approval from the CUNY BA office is required.
*CUNY BA students do not need to meet the home college’s minimum criteria for ePermits (i.e., one semester completed at the college, or a certain GPA.)
*Students are allowed to take independent study courses, internship credits and study abroad credits at their home college as well as at a permit college.
* Students can register for graduate courses.
* CUNY BA students should be scheduled for registration appointments with the host college’s peer group (i.e., upper senior, lower senior, etc.)
*Each semester, a roster of CUNY BA students is sent to each home college. However, some CUNY BA students may not be coded correctly. College staff should check with the CUNY BA office before rejecting the epermit, specifically, Ann Marie Doering, 212-817-8231.
Taking Non-CUNY Courses
Students may take courses at colleges outside of CUNY toward their CUNY BA degree. Those colleges must be either regionally accredited or accredited by the New York State Department of Education. Courses taken at non-CUNY colleges for Areas of Concentration must be approved in advance by the faculty mentor and the program’s Academic Director. Students must attain grades of “C” or better to transfer non-CUNY courses into the program. Non-CUNY courses will appear on the CUNY BA transcript as “Non-CUNY College” and with grades of “CR” (“credit”). Students are responsible for registering at the non-CUNY school, paying tuition there, submitting the course information on the CUNY BA registration forms, and arranging to have transcripts sent back to the program at the end of the semester. (Students must also remember that they are responsible for satisfying their 30 CUNY credit residency requirement and that non-CUNY college credit obviously does not satisfy any part of the residency requirement.)