Time Conflict Overrides

Students are expected to attend classes according to the College’s attendance policy, and federal credit hour regulation; partial attendance (meaning, situations in which substantial class time in one of the courses is lost due to conflicting schedules) is not permitted. Contact Academic Affairs (Associate Dean) or email registrar@bowdoin.edu with any questions.

Time conflict overrides are only available to a student in limited situations. Specifically, time conflict overrides are only available when a student attempting to register for courses encounters a time conflict error for reasons such as the following:

  • when a course has multiple meetings for the same activity and the student need not attend all of them, as when an entire lab block is used to schedule a course’s multiple discussion sections, but a student need only attend one of those sections, for a relatively short portion of the lab block;
  • when the time conflict is caused by a student needing to register for a musical ensemble that is scheduled as if the ensemble filled an entire block, when in fact the student need only be present for a portion of the block dedicated to rehearsals of a particular set of instruments (“sectionals”);
  • when the apparent conflict is the result of a very small overlap between two class-related experiences (for instance, between a lab ending at 4:10 PM and a language discussion section starting at 4 PM)

Time conflict overrides are NOT available for a student to attend one class and arrange to watch asynchronous lectures and complete the coursework for a second class outside of the course time.


Students who qualify for a time conflict override should follow these instructions:

  • Student discusses situation with both course instructors and, if they agree:
  • Both instructors log in to Polaris and give any needed permissions and overrides, e.g., instructor permission if this is occurring during an add/drop round of registration. 
  • Both instructors email registrar@bowdoin.edu with their written approval of the student registering for two classes that overlap in time.
  • Student emails registrar@bowdoin.edu requesting to be registered for the conflicting classes/labs
  • Registrar's staff processes the time conflict override and notifies the student when they are officially registered for both classes.