Dear Students,

We have received requests from some of our students to update our 2021-2022 Academic Calendar in order to bring the dates forward. Upon a detailed evaluation of all the requests, we would like to provide you with general information about the preparation of our academic calendars and an explanation about these requests so that there will be no further misunderstandings or misinterpretations regarding our educational processes.

An academic term, on average, consists of 18 weeks in total, as explained below:

  * 14 weeks (70 workdays): from the beginning of the classes until the last day of the classes (this may vary according to national and religious holidays)

  * 2 weeks: final exams at the end of the term

  * 1 week: submission of grades

  * 1 week: submission of Incomplete (I) grades and grade corrections

Apart from exceptional periods such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the terms in our academic calendars are always organized based on these required periods. During the pandemic period, the following exceptional changes, which we shared with you in our previous announcements and also indicated in our academic calendar, were made:

  * A four-week long-distance education period was added to the end of  the 2019-2020 Spring Semester.

  * The break between the 2020-2021 Fall Semester and the Spring Semester was extended and determined as four weeks in order to give more time to the students who could not do their internship due to the pandemic in the 2019-2020 Summer Semester.

In addition to such regulations that naturally affect the length of these academic terms, as you know, our university offers summer school to its students as well as makeup examinations for the students who are about to graduate. We have worked on our academic calendar, intending to continue to provide our students with these opportunities during the pandemic period just like we did before. Also, the allocated time for the registration for summer school courses, beginning and ending of the classes, gradings, applications for makeup examinations, and their gradings need to be placed on our academic calendars as they were previously determined by the Rules and Regulations.

On our academic calendars, you may see one or two weeks of breaks in between various terms or processes. These periods are granted for arrangements that require intensive work, which must be done by our administrative units after all the processes of the previous term are completed and before the following term begins.

We would like to emphasize that we determine all of our educational processes and academic calendars by trying to find common grounds on which different needs can be met, evaluating all the possibilities we have in our hands, and reducing the effects of these difficult times we have been going through especially on our students as much as we can. Therefore, while working on the 2021-2022 Academic Calendar, we held the same principles as our priority and evaluated all the requests from our academic units and students. As a result, our 2021-2022 Academic Calendar has been prepared and shared with you after considering all the possible feedback that can be implemented.

Based on this information that we have shared with you in detail, no further changes are planned to be made in the regulations regarding the 2021-2022 Fall Semester on our current Academic Calendar. However, we will continue to work on ways to prevent the beginning and ending dates of academic terms (due to our aforementioned core rules and regulations as well as the regulations regarding the pandemic) from being placed on further dates in the following semesters.

We wish you good health and a happy holiday.

Sincerely,

Rectorate