Advising

Your Faculty Advisor

Your advisor can help you plan a program that makes sense for you. During the term, your advisor is the one to consult about academic matters, adding and dropping subjects, careers in mathematics, or about graduate school. Toward the end of the term is a good time to discuss the next term's program with your advisor. There's often less time pressure then than there is on registration day. You need not limit these discussions to your advisor. Feel free to consult other members of the Department on any of these matters. Most are quite willing to give advice to students who come seeking it. You may also talk to your advisor about problems you might have that are not purely academic. Professors Nike Sun and Steven Johnson are the co-chairs of the faculty advisors in Mathematics. A committee of advisors meets to review Math Majors' records and to recommend candidates for graduation.

Registration Procedures

During the previous term, you will preregister on WebSIS. The subjects you list at this time are only tentative and can be changed later. Schedule a meeting with your advisor during the registration period. Discuss your program with your advisor, make any necessary changes to the registration https://registration.mit.edu. Your advisor must approve your registration. You review and submit the registration. Any changes after your registration is submitted are made via the on-line Add/Drop/Change system, https://studentformsandpetitions.mit.edu. As with your on-line registration, you will need to fill out this form, get your advisor's approval, and then submit it to the Registrar's Office. You may add subjects up to the 5th week of the term. After the 1st week, you must have the approval of the instructor in the subject as well as that of your advisor. If you wait until the deadline to add a subject, it may be difficult to find both the instructor and your advisor in order to get their signatures. Don't wait.

Your Program

As a general rule, the Department expects that in each semester you will:

1. Complete at least 36 units. (Fewer than this will make the CAP, as well as the Department, unhappy and may put visas and scholarships at risk.)
2. Take at least one math subject (unless your math requirement is completed).
3. Continue taking the General Institute Requirements, so that by the last semester of your senior year, you have at most one required humanities subject and one other required subject to complete.

Your advisor normally will not approve your program unless it meets these minimal requirements.

Progress Report

The Math Department tracks your progress in the Math Major via check-sheets. You can find yours at https://math.mit.edu/cgi-bin/scripts/advisors/checksheet.cgi. Detailed instructions are here. Your check-sheet provides a useful complement to the degree audit that you can find on WebSIS.