<p>The admission office says that D-plan might be limited to international students due to visa constraints. So I am curious about how my academic calendar will be like if I am admitted next year. </p>
<p>May any dartmouth international student share his/her academic calendar? Thanks!</p>
<p>Disclaimer: IANAIL (I am not an immigration lawyer). The best way to find out more about this is to email the international office, which has lawyers and staffers whose entire professional lives revolve around figuring out arcane US immigration law. Having said that, this is my impression of the system as an international student.</p>
<p>What this really means is that if you take any Dartmouth classes (whether on campus or on an off-campus program) during the summer, this will force you to reshuffle your D-Plan in a very odd way. The problem is that the US student visa system assumes students take classes for two semesters, and take the summer off. The quarter system is seen as an odd exception to this rule, and so they didn’t devote a lot of thought to structuring the regulations for it.</p>
<p>The regulations as applied to the D-plan basically require you to spend at least three consecutive terms taking classes. (Three Dartmouth terms = two regular semesters.) You may not take a leave term (i.e. not be enrolled in any Dartmouth classes) until you have spent at least three terms enrolled in Dartmouth classes.</p>
<p>What this means is that if you take every summer off, like people would at other schools, you’re great. Internationals are actually exempt from sophomore summer for this reason; by default internationals take all three summers off. You have to actively opt in to sophomore summer.</p>
<p>That’s right – you can spend more than three consecutive terms enrolled for classes, and I know a lot of internationals who’ve done this, whether it’s because of a foreign study program, or because they want to take classes in the summer. The problem this creates is that the next term you can take off is the fall.</p>
<p>So let’s say you opt in to sophomore summer, and take junior fall as your leave term. You come back for classes in junior winter. Now you must spend at least junior winter, spring and summer enrolled in Dartmouth classes before you can take another term off – i.e. you must wait till senior fall. The problem: you cannot take an off term in your senior year (all students must spend their entire freshman and senior year enrolled in classes, barring extenuating circumstances). So internationals who opt to take summer classes essentially get cheated out of one of the three off terms they are entitled to, all because of visa regulations requiring you to be enrolled in classes for at least three consecutive terms. On the plus side, this forces you to graduate early, so you can spend senior spring bumming around Hanover or starting work (both options appeal to internationals, at least based on my anecdotal evidence). The downside of this is that you spend five terms in a row taking classes (junior winter through senior winter).</p>
<p>I have heard that you can apply for a new I-20 (an essential immigration document – one is issued to you when you get in to Dartmouth, another is issued to you when you file your major, and another is issued every time you go on a Dartmouth off-campus program; all these documents have to be kept by you forever, by the way), and this somehow would let you circumvent the 3-consecutive-term regulation, but I have never heard of anyone doing this – from what I can ascertain it’s a very messy process.</p>
<p>I’ve decided to avoid all these potential headaches and just take every summer off. If you really want to spend sophomore summer with your classmates, you don’t have to be enrolled in classes to be at Dartmouth anyway – you can take a job on-campus, which is what some internationals do (it’s called the Hanover Foreign Study Program).</p>
<p>Hi johnleemk,</p>
<p>Thanks for your information!</p>
<p>wow thanks that’s really helpful! hmm ‘hanover fsp’ is just lingo right, or is it a real program? (im sorry if that’s a dumb question but ‘hanover’ and ‘foreign study’ put together is rather contradictory, haha)</p>
<p>@aprilwinds: yes, ‘hanover fsp’ is just lingo</p>
<p>My roommate this past year was international and what johnleemk said sounds about right.</p>
<p>My son is a class 2010. Being a Canadian student holding an F1 Visa, he got all summers off. That is, his D-Plan does not include any on-campus summer term. The schedule is like:
<p>Hope that helps</p>
<p>Great response by johnleemk, but one thing I should add is that there IS a way to circumvent all the byzantine rules and structure a program that fits your needs - but it involves canceling and reissuing your I-20 document (a process that the international advisers on campus actively discourage, but the option is still available). Hence, it is possible for you to do something like this:</p>
<p>R R R R
R R R L (Chop I-20, reissue before the next term)
L R R L
R R R</p>
<p>I don’t know why, but I’ve been told that it’s always a good idea to keep your documents clean and intact. Nevertheless, I’m still chopping mine.</p>
<p>EDIT: K I’m actually an idiot, since johnleemk did mention this. But still, at least you all know that there is someone out there going through the motions.</p>