Course attributes, created by the University Registrar’s Office at the request of departments and program directors, enhance the course discovery process by providing searchable labels for courses that fulfill distributional designation requirements, specific degree and/or certificate requirements, or have particular characteristics.
Attributes serve as helpful search tools for students planning their academic journeys and for departments organizing their curriculum offerings.
What Are Course Attributes?
Course attributes are searchable labels attached to courses that provide additional information beyond basic course details. They function as a way for departments to indicate important information about their courses, such as which areas of study a course fulfills for a major requirement or when a course from another department counts toward degree requirements.
Examples of departmental course attributes include:
- YC FREN Taught in English
- YC HIST War & Society
- YC S&DS Methods Data Science
- YC ECON Theory Seminar
Course attributes help students:
- Find courses that fulfill specific major and certificate requirements: Quickly identify courses that satisfy particular concentration areas or departmental requirements
- Discover cross-disciplinary opportunities: Locate courses in other departments that count toward your degree requirements
- Plan efficiently: Streamline academic planning by filtering courses based on attributes relevant to your academic goals
- Explore specialized topics: Find courses focusing on specific themes or methodological approaches across departments; particularly useful when working to earn a certificate
Course Attributes allow departments to:
- Highlight specialized offerings: Call attention to courses with distinctive methodological or thematic characteristics
- Tag cross-listed courses: Identify courses “primary in a different department, yet appropriate for their majors to earn elective credit”
- Organize curriculum coherently: Create clear pathways for students to fulfill degree requirements
- Track requirements in Degree Audit: Tagging courses with attributes is a simple way to indicate in Degree Audit that a course fulfills certificate, concentration, and major requirements
Yale Course Search provides tools for filtering courses by attributes
For Yale College Attributes:
- Visit courses.yale.edu
- Click on “Yale College Attributes” for a list of courses that fulfill distributional designations, first-year and sophomore seminars
- Continue as above (steps 4-6)
For Departmental Attributes:
- Visit courses.yale.edu
- Click on “Advanced Search”
- Scroll to the “Any Course Information Attribute” dropdown option
- Select the appropriate attribute
- Click on the “Search” bar
- Courses with the chosen attribute open in the Search Results panel
TIP: In the list of departmental attributes, those for Yale College begin with “YC” and for the Graduate School with “GS.”
How Attributes Are Assigned
Course attributes are created and managed by the University Registrar’s Office in collaboration with academic departments. Departments propose which attributes should be assigned to each course based on content, methodology, and relevance to degree requirements.
Faculty and department administrators can request attribute changes only when:
- Creating new courses
- Updating existing courses
- Recognizing courses from other departments as fulfilling requirements
Additional Resources
For more information about Course Attributes and how they can enhance your academic planning experience, please contact:
- Your Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS)
- Your academic adviser