A number of standard Humanities courses which run in the first or second semester are also offered in the Summer and Winter Terms. These are referred to as 'Third-Term' courses: credit-bearing courses offered to students to support them in meeting the curriculum requirements of their degrees.  They are referred to as ‘Third Term’ as they are offered outside the regular first and second semester structure, usually over the winter or summer vacation periods.

General information

• Due to the intense and highly compressed nature of these courses, students may register for only one Third-Term course at a time.
• NSFAS does not fund Third Term courses. UCT has a small fund for third term courses, but will limit awards to students in their final year of study for whom the third term course will save them a semester of registration.
• Third Term courses should not be confused with UCT short courses, which are not credit-bearing courses.
• Summer and Winter Term course descriptions are listed in the relevant department's entry in the Humanities faculty handbook, but this does not mean that all courses which exist in summer or winter format will necessarily run in any given year. 
• A summer or winter term course may be cancelled in the week or two before the course starts, if insufficient numbers of students sign up for it. If this happens, the faculty office will remove the course from your transcript and will email you to let you know of the cancellation; if you are signing up for an elective, i.e. you don't need a specific course, you could choose a different course in place of the cancelled one and add it by the usual change of curriculum process.

Summer and Winter term dates

The Winter term runs in the June/July vacation, and the summer term runs in the November/December vacation. Exact dates for the winter term and summer term may be found on the central academic calendar.  

Summer and Winter term Courses

Please see the Humanities Undergraduate Handbook for a list of third term courses that may be on offer.

To reiterate, courses may be cancelled in the week before the term starts. You may contact the relevant department to confirm if your desired course is scheduled to run this year. Humanities undergraduate students will also receive updates on third term course offerings via Amathuba announcements throughout the year.

Sign up for a course

• To sign up for a third term course, you may either do so during your annual registration or will need to complete a Change of Curriculum form and submit to a Peoplesoft service request in order to add the relevant course.
• Humanities students wanting to enroll for third term courses owned by another faculty must include written permission from the relevant course convenor in their change of curriculum requests.
• You can apply for Summer and Winter term courses until the second day of the course. 
• You can drop a summer or winter term course by change of curriculum service request for a full fee refund and transcript removal up until the Friday of the first week in which the course runs.