Sanity check on the plan of work of MS/PhD students:

• Each course should be identified by semester to be taken and number of credit hours.
• Courses being used to satisfy core requirements should be clearly marked and it should be clear whether the student is using old (applies only to students who entered before Fall 2003, perhaps earlier) or new rules. [Almost none of the plans I've been getting do this, even though the grad handbook tells the students to do it -- probably nobody reads the handbook; they just rely on filling out the form.]
• Core courses for the PhD must be taken care of within the first year (or the first 18 hours of coursework if the student is not full time). This is not true under old rules, but the putting off of core courses should be severely discouraged (imagine the plight of an instructor who has to deal with a student trying to complete a core course requirement the same semester they're defending their dissertation; this is a real situation I'm currently facing).
• MS plans must have at least 21 hours of letter-graded courses and 30 hours in all (at most 6 can be 695, another 3 can be 630).
• PhD plans must have a total of 72 hours. 18 of those can be transfer hours from an MS program elsewhere, 36 if the MS is from here and the student stays continuously enrolled from start of MS through end of PhD.
• Restrictions for GSSP:
  1. MS students now have to drop down to 3 hours in the 4th semester.
  2. PhD students drop to 3 in the 7th semester (and must complete their oral prelim by the 6th semester).
  3. MS/PhD's drop to 3 in the 9th semester and must complete their oral prelim by the 8th semester).
  4. After the 4th/6th/8th semester, the GSSP does no longer cover tuition, only health benefits.
  Here are the details.