The add/drop window
The first week or so of the term. During it you can add an open course, drop a course with no record at all (it never appears on your transcript), and swap sections freely. This is the time to fix a schedule that is not working — a course that is harder or easier than expected, a section time that conflicts with work, a professor whose approach does not fit you. A course dropped in this window is gone without a trace.
The withdrawal window
From the end of add/drop until a deadline around the middle of the term (often week 9 or 10). Leaving a course now is a withdrawal, not a drop: it posts a grade of "W" on your transcript. A W does not affect your GPA and is not a failure, but a transcript with several Ws can prompt questions from graduate programs or scholarship committees. There is usually no tuition refund this late.
After the withdrawal deadline
Once the withdrawal deadline passes, you are committed to the course and will receive the grade you earn. Leaving it now requires a late-withdrawal petition, granted only for documented non-academic emergencies (a serious illness, a family crisis) — not for "I'm going to fail." Doing poorly in a class is not grounds for a late withdrawal.
Financial aid interactions
Dropping below full-time (usually 12 credits) can reduce or cancel financial aid, change your bill, affect scholarship eligibility, and — for some students — affect health insurance, athletic eligibility, visa status, or on-campus housing. Check with Financial Aid before you drop a course that takes you under 12 credits. A retroactive aid adjustment can leave you owing money.
Withdrawing from all courses
Leaving every course mid-term is a term withdrawal, a separate process through the Dean of Students or the Registrar, with its own form, its own refund schedule, and financial-aid consequences (possible repayment of disbursed aid). Do not just stop attending — an unofficial withdrawal usually becomes failing grades and a worse aid outcome.
Know the exact dates
The specific deadlines are on the academic calendar each term and in your portal. Part-of-term and summer courses have compressed, earlier deadlines. Put the drop and withdrawal dates for your term in your calendar in the first week so a decision is never forced by a date you forgot.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.