Maintaining Your Student Status

There are several conditions associated with your study permit that you must meet, including being enrolled at a designated learning institution (DLI) and demonstrating you are actively pursuing your studies by:

• being enrolled full-time or part-time during each academic semester, excluding regularly scheduled breaks
• making progress toward completing your program's courses and
• not taking authorized leaves longer than 150 days from your study program.

Please note that part-time studies have implications for working and post-grad work permit eligibility.

As an international student, it is your responsibility to know when your status will expire and ensure that you take the necessary steps to extend your status if required.

Scheduled breaks

A scheduled break is a break from full-time studies. Full-time studies is a nine or more credit course load per semester.

Scheduled breaks at SAIT include:

• a break between academic semesters (the day after the last day of the semester until the day before the start of the next semester)
• reading break (during the winter semester)
• scheduled semester break, including:
  • one in the winter from January to April
  • one in the spring/summer from May to August
  • one in the fall from September to December.

You must remain enrolled full-time at SAIT in the term preceding the scheduled semester break and in the term following the break. This break typically transitions you from one year of study to the next.

During a scheduled semester break, you can choose to take no courses, a part-time course load of less than nine credits, or a full-time course load of nine credits or more.

🚨 We strongly recommend submitting a letter of explanation with your PGWP application if you decide to take any courses during your scheduled break.

An example of a scheduled semester break:

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada state each scheduled break should be no longer than 150 days. The maximum cumulative duration of scheduled breaks is 180 days per calendar year.

Students at SAIT usually take the third semester following their starting term as their scheduled semester break to align with the suggested program outline. For example:

• if you begin your program in the Fall semester (September), you will likely take the following Spring/Summer as your scheduled semester break
• if you begin your program in the Winter semester (January), you would likely take the following Fall as your scheduled semester break
• if you begin your program in the Spring/Summer semester (May), you will likely take the following Winter as your scheduled semester break.