Academic Planning

Students at UC San Diego follow many different paths to graduation. Your major requirements, your College requirements, and your own personal interests all contribute to determining the courses you take.

The Quarter Limit Policy allows students admitted to UC San Diego as new first-year students to enroll for 12 quarters (excluding summer terms). Students admitted as Transfers have 6 quarters of enrollment. If students need additional quarters, they are required to submit a completion plan to be reviewed by advisors.

Academic Plans

Quarter-by-quarter plans are available for every College and Major combination for students to follow.

Find Your Plan

Your Worksheet

To begin building your own personalized long-term plan, download the Academic Planning Worksheet and save a copy.

Build Your Own

Follow these steps to create your plan

Step 1: Save an Academic Planning Worksheet

To create a personalized academic plan, use the Academic Planning worksheet and save a copy.

When you create a personalized academic plan, it is a tentative plan since it could change depending on course availability, or adding or dropping courses. It is also a live document, so you can change it anytime you enroll in courses. The plan will automatically calculate units that you enter to ensure that you are meeting university requirements for minimum units.

Please make sure that you also count any units that you have transferred in. This includes community college units as well as credits earned from AP, IB, and A-Level exams.

Step 2: Find your sample plan

At UC San Diego, the Colleges and academic departments have developed quarter-by-quarter academic plans for every path.

Please visit the Academic Plans website to view available plans. Select your entering year and major.

There are many things to see on the plans such as overlapping courses (marked by a double arrow) and extra notes (such as asterisks). Overlapping courses means that the course counts towards GE and major requirements. There may also be elective courses included in these plans. Elective courses count towards your overall university unit requirements.

Special Notes

These are sample template plans that guide your personalized academic plans. The plans do not take into account AP/IB scores or community college coursework. Each major has different plans available.
For the Transfer plans, these assume that students have IGETC Certification and 90 units earned when they transfer to UC San Diego. Additionally, some plans may assume completion of major lower division prep work.
Each plan has specific notes from the College and major departments. Please read the Comments carefully.

Step 3: Run your degree audit

You can access your degree audit through TritonLink. We strongly suggest that you download a new degree audit every time you plan to look at it. This ensures that you are looking at the most updated information in case there have been any academic changes to your record since you last downloaded your degree audit.

This is a living document and will be updated anytime you add or drop a course, change the grading option of a course, when transfer courses are posted, or when a final grade is entered. Your degree audit is split into sections by requirements:

Major requirements are the first large section.
Your College general education requirements follow.
- Note: Transfer students with IGETC certification will only see remaining GE requirements.
University Requirements: ELWR, AHI, DEI, JTCCER (first-years only), 60 upper division units, etc.

If you need additional assistance learning how to read your degree audit, please refer to the TritonLink Degree Audit page.

If you think there is an error in your degree audit or something is not displaying correctly, contact your academic advisor via the VAC.

Step 4: Build your plan

Using your degree audit and sample plans, you can now begin building your unique academic plan.

Use the following resources to create your plan:

Department Course Offerings
- Many academic departments post their course offerings for the next academic year. We recommend searching through Google, e.g., “UCSD Biology Course Offerings” to find department/program annual course offering webpages.
- Examples: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Global Health, Math, Psychology, etc.
Department/program webpages: Units have important major/minor information, program opportunities, or even a checklist as a resource.
- Examples: Computer Science, Human Biology, Political Science, etc.
The General Catalog for prerequisites: these are courses that must be completed prior to enrollment in a future course
College general education web pages
University Requirements

Step 5: Meet with your advisors

To ensure your academic plan is accurate, you should schedule an appointment with your major advisor first.

Then contact your College advisor to have them review your plan as well.

To find their availability, go to VAC.ucsd.edu - Meet with Advisor tab, or visit their website.

Things to consider

Plan for 12 units each quarter for full-time status (unless approved for part time study)
You need 180 cumulative units (minimum)
- Includes AP/IB/A-level units, as well as transfer credit. Up to 105 lower-division transfer units from other institutions can count.
You need 60 upper-division units (minimum)
- Any courses at UC San Diego numbered 100-199
- Most majors require 48 upper division units. Check your degree audit and add Upper Division Elective courses to your plan as needed.
Be sure you've planned all University requirements. These courses might overlap with major or College GE courses.
Units taken Pass/Not Pass must be less than 25% of all units earned at UC San Diego. Check your degree audit for the calculation.

Course Prerequisites

If you are currently taking a course at UC San Diego that is a prerequisite for a course in a future quarter, the system will recognize that and allow you to enroll (the system is assuming you will pass the course).

If you do not pass the prerequisite course, at the start of the following quarter you will be dropped from the subsequent course during the prerequisite check process. So, if you do not pass the prerequisite course, you will need to update your plan accordingly.

Pre-Health/Pre-Med Students

If you plan to apply to medical or health professional schools, you need to ensure you meet appropriate program prerequisites. Visit the Health Beat Advising website for a list of prerequisites by health profession type.

Graduate School

Some graduate programs may require certain courses be completed for admission. Make sure to research graduate program admission requirements and take extra courses into account.

Adding a Minor

Some academic departments and programs offer minors. The requirements must include at least 28 units, including at least 20 upper-division units.

You can use two upper-division courses (a maximum of eight units) to fulfill the requirements for a minor that have also been used to satisfy the requirements of a major.
See How Upper Division Courses may Overlap for more information
Read How to Declare a Minor for guidance

Adding a Double Major

On your academic plan, include the requirements for both majors, including 10 upper-division courses (40 units) unique to each major.

You must complete the Double Major Petition process.
Selective Majors: You must be accepted into the selective major first. Then, you can complete the Double Major Petition process to add the second major.