Enroll in an Individual Course

Complete prerequisites. Expand your knowledge on a specific topic. Enhance your professional development. Or try something entirely new. The University of Arizona offers undergraduate and graduate-level courses for non-degree-seeking students.

What is a Non-Degree Seeking Student?

As a non-degree seeking student, you are not working towards graduating with a degree from the University of Arizona. You are taking classes without officially declaring a major and might be fulfilling prerequisites, growing your expertise in a certain field or just interested in picking up a new skill.

Have questions?

ASK AN ADVISOR

FIND OUT MORE

Loading...

Why Apply for an Individual Course?

1. Prepare for an Advanced Degree

Gain the background knowledge necessary to excel in more advanced coursework as part of your program of choice.

Are you getting ready to pursue an advanced degree in medicine, business, law or another field? Need a few additional credits to meet your pre-requisite requirements for admission? If so, taking an individual course through the University of Arizona Online might be the right choice for you.

Examples of available courses:

81%

of students said Arizona Online
met their expectations of
excellent online instruction.

Getting ready to apply to medical school? Explore a sample of courses that pre-med students can take as individual courses, focusing on science and laboratory requirements needed for continued education in medicine or healthcare.

Biochemistry courses:

  • Prerequisite of OCEM I & II
  • BIOC 384: Foundations in Biochemistry
  • BIOC 385: Metabolic Biochemistry

Chemistry courses:

  • CHEM 141: General Chemistry Lecture I: Quantitative
  • CHEM 142: General Chemistry Lecture II: Quantitative Approach
  • CHEM 145: Quantitative Chemistry Laboratory I
  • CHEM 146: Quantitative Chemistry Laboratory II

Organic Chemistry:

  • CHEM 241A: Lectures in Organic Chemistry
  • CHEM241B: Lectures in Organic Chemistry

Microbiology courses:

  • MIC 205A: General Microbiology
  • Prerequisite of Biology I & II
  • ECOL 320: Genetics

Psychology courses:

  • PSIO 201: Human Anatomy and Physiology I
  • PSIO 202: Human Anatomy and Physiology II

Math courses:

  • MATH 263: Introduction to Statistics and Biostatistics

Molecular & Cellular Biology Courses:

  • MCB 181L: Introductory Biology Laboratory I
  • MCB 181R: Introductory Biology I
  • ECOL 182L: Introductory Biology Laboratory II
  • ECOL 182R: Introductory Biology II

Explore a range of courses you can take if you are considering a pre-health professional pathway, graduate nutrition programs, physician assistant programs or medical school.

Nutritional Science Courses:

  • NSC 308: Nutrition and Metabolism
  • NSC 310: Principles of Human Nutrition in Health and Disease
  • NCS 325: Foundations of Medical Nutrition Therapy
  • NSC 351R: Fundamentals of Food Science
  • NSC 425: Medical Nutrition Therapy I
  • NSC 435: Medical Nutrition Therapy II
  • NSC 458: Food Service Organization and Management

Getting ready to earn your MBA or BBA? Get ahead with core curriculum requirements offered as individual courses.

Accounting Courses:

  • ACCT 200: Introduction to Financial Accounting
  • ACCT 210: Introduction to Managerial Accounting

Business Administration Courses:

  • BNAD 304: Survey of Finance

Applied Computing Courses:

  • APCV 302: Statistics in Information Age

 

2. Supplement Your Degree

Give your resume an edge, boost your GPA or supplement your field of study with additional courses outside your degree.

Keep your education on track with an individual course. If you are trying to improve or maintain your GPA, meet graduate admission requirements by establishing a satisfactory graduate-level GPA or are looking to transfer to another institution, then enrolling in an individual course might be the right choice for you.

At the graduate level, completing an individual course can often meet program-specific, subject-matter requirements. An individual course through Arizona Online can help you:

  • Improve your overall GPA
  • Fulfill missing course requirements or improve a low GPA in a particular subject area like science or math
  • Address a significant gap of time since you last attended a higher education institution

Examples of available courses:

Improve your proficiency and success by focusing on problem-solving skills and applications. In this course, you will cover topics like properties of functions and graphs, linear and quadratic equations, polynomial functions, exponential and logarithmic functions with applications. You will need a graphing calculator for this course and the TI-83 or TI-84 models are recommended. Calculators that perform symbolic manipulations, such as the TI-89, NSpire CAS, or HP50g, cannot be used.

Calculus deals with motion, such as vehicle development, acoustics, light and electricity. Calculus is incredibly useful when analyzing any quantity that changes over time. This course covers introductory topics in differential and integral calculus. You will need a graphing calculator for this course. If you have credit in a higher-level math course you cannot receive credit for this course.

Quantitative chemical analysis is a branch of chemistry that deals with the determination of the amount or percentage of one or more constituents of a sample. You will take this course in the first semester of a two-semester online laboratory sequence as an introduction to this very important branch of chemistry.

Quantitative chemistry enables chemists to calculate known quantities of materials. In the second course of this two-semester online laboratory sequence, you will continue to learn the central principles and practices of modern quantitative analysis.

 

3. Explore a New Interest

Discover new areas of study or take classes for personal enrichment outside of an academic degree program.

There are many reasons to take an individual class for personal experience. You have the freedom to choose a class that interests you without applying to a full degree program that could require prerequisites or unrelated elective courses. Do you want to learn a new language? Take on a new skill? Or are you just a life-long learner? Then an individual course might be right for you.

woman focusing in class

Examples of available courses:

Psychology studies people and examines why they act and think the way they do. Psychology helps you to understand more about how the body and mind work together. This course is a survey of psychology including history, systems, and methods; structure and functions of the nervous and endocrine systems, learning, motivation and emotion, perception, memory, thought and language, personality, development, social cognition and behavior, and psychopathology and psychotherapy. The knowledge you gain in this course can help with decision-making, avoiding stressors, time management, setting and achieving goals, and living effectively.

Gendered roles and norms are intrinsically woven into and practiced in our daily lives. Society has fixed standards and rules to validate both masculine and feminine identities. This course is an analysis of gender differences and their source in biology and culture so that open dialogue can be established. You will explore how gender is interpreted in social settings, cultural institutions and more. This course will broaden your understanding of gender in our changing society.

Learn one of the top five most spoken languages in the world! Not only can learning a second language help you in your career prospects, it can also expand your view of the world and foster an understanding of the interrelation of language and human nature. Living in a global economy means that more and more jobs are advertising positions where knowing more than one language is essential. Being bilingual can also help you master your own language and can improve your memory and brain function. This course is designed for you if you have no previous experience in Spanish.

Food science plays a vital role in ensuring our world’s food supply is safe, nutritious, and sustainable. It is the study of the physical, biological, and chemical makeup of food and the concepts underlying food processing. This course covers the scientific principles of food production, preservation, and ingredient interactions.

 

4. Professional Development

Communication, time management and project management are the types of vital business skills taught in professional education courses.

Are you looking to enhance your professional skills, train for a new field or do you want to stand out in a competitive job market? Taking an individual course may be the right choice for you.

Examples of available courses:

Financial literacy is integral to people’s financial well-being and to a healthy economy. This course is an introduction to finance that will build a foundation in the basic tools and techniques of finance. An overview of finance careers will explore positions in the financial planning, insurance, investment banking fields and more. The course also covers the impact of markets and institutions on businesses. Take this class to unlock your finance career potential.

Inferential statistics is that branch of statistics that is useful in just about any field. Inferential statistics creates and uses techniques for using data to either explain current situations or to predict what events will happen. It's the basis for data mining, machine learning and more. Business uses it to predict sales, analyze supply chains, market to customers, find new markets, evaluate risks, vet prospective employees, and improve the efficiency of operations. It is used by scientists, engineers, academics, pharmaceutical companies, business analysts and IT personnel.

Gain transferable skills in computer technology, social media and more. In this course, you will evaluate the impact of the Internet on social, organizational, personal and ethical issues. You will develop a sufficient understanding of computers and other issues to form critical opinions about them, as well as acquire and hone skills to recognize and evaluate their role in interacting with the Internet. You will walk away with an in-depth understanding of how organizations of all kinds can use systems and the data they generate to make better decisions.

SERP courses are popular for education requirements. If you are interested in becoming an educator in special education, rehabilitation, gifted education, sign language deaf studies, educational interpreting and more, or you want to strengthen your skills in your current field, a SERP course might be right for you.

Here are some important facts to consider before you pursue an individual class:

Prerequisites:

If a course has a prerequisite, unofficial transcripts are needed to verify that your prerequisites are complete. The department must handle registration manually so they can override the prerequisite and enroll you.

Transcripts:

Even though, as a non-degree-seeking student, you do not have to submit official transcripts when you submit your application for admission, we do often need unofficial copies to verify that prerequisites are met.

Restricted courses:

Some courses (especially those offered by Eller) are restricted to declared majors/minors, and non-degree-seeking students are not allowed into those classes. Be sure to contact a department advisor for more information.

 

Undergraduate level:

As a non-degree-seeking student, you can only take up to 15 credits that can be applied to an undergraduate degree program.

Graduate level:

As a non-degree-seeking student, you can only take up to 12 credits that can be applied to a graduate degree program.

Course approval:

Some courses have prerequisites or require department approval. Before enrolling in an individual course, be sure to speak to an advisor.

Non-Degree Seeking Student Information

REQUIREMENTS

Students participating in a non University of Arizona sponsored high school program must be at least 16 years old to apply as a non-degree seeking student.

A maximum of 15 credits completed as a non-degree seeking student may be used for fulfilling undergraduate degree requirements.

COST & ELIGIBILITY

PER UNIT COST: $525

For eligibility requirements, visit the eligibility page.

The University of Arizona cannot administer financial aid to non-degree seeking graduate or undergraduate students. Federal regulations require enrollment in an eligible academic program for the purpose of obtaining a degree in order to qualify for federal aid.

REQUIREMENTS

A U.S. bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited university/college or a final degree awarded from a comparable institute of higher education is required for non-degree seeking student admission. There is no GPA requirement for graduate non-degree seeking students.

Up to 12 units of graduate credit earned in non-degree status and/or transferred from other institutions may be used towards an advanced degree once a student obtains regular admission to a degree program.

Up to 6 units of graduate credit earned in non-degree status and/or transferred from other institutions may be used towards a graduate certificate once a student obtains regular admission to a certificate program.

After completing no more than 12 consecutive semester units of graded (A, B, C) 500-level or higher course work with a minimum 3.000 GPA, non-degree students should apply for admission to a graduate degree program.

Please visit the Graduate College Non-Degree Seeking page for more helpful information.

COST & ELIGIBILITY

PER UNIT COST: $820 - $1250

Students in graduate courses from the following disciplines will be charged $1,250 per unit for all courses taken while in non-degree seeking status:

  • Business
  • Engineering
  • Mining
  • Public Health
  • Science
  • Nurse Anesthesia

Students in graduate non-degree seeking status who do not register for any of the disciplines listed above will be charged $820 per unit.

For non-degree seeking eligibility requirements, visit the eligibility page.

The University of Arizona cannot administer financial aid to non-degree seeking graduate or undergraduate students. However, a student admitted as a non-degree graduate student may qualify for federal loan assistance if the student is taking prerequisite courses for admittance into a University of Arizona Graduate Degree program.

Learn More

Federal regulations require enrollment in an eligible academic program for the purpose of obtaining a degree in order to qualify for federal aid.

Customize Your Journey

Non-degree seeking status is not right for everyone. Students interested in individual courses are ineligible to receive financial aid or scholarships or be awarded degrees or certificates. If you are wanting to fill requirements before enrolling in a full degree program, check out the Second Start program or speak with an advisor about custom-designed pathways that will help you get into the program of your choice.

SECOND START

Arizona Online Instagram Feed