Deadline Philosophy

61B is a fast-paced course, and 61BL runs twice as fast and has more assignments. If you fall behind, it will be very difficult to catch up. As a result, the deadlines in 61BL are pretty firm.

However, we understand that sometimes life gets in the way, so we’ve provided a mechanism for you to submit assignments late if you need, up to a point.

Slip Days

You will receive a total of 8 slip days for the entire semester that can be used for lab and project assignments. Slip days can not be used for forms, surveys, or homeworks. Each slip day extends your deadline by 24 hours. Slip days may only be applied retroactively, and you may not use a fraction of a slip day. If you need a longer extension, please refer to the Extenuating Circumstances Section below.

Lab Lateness

For lab assignments, you can use at most one slip day per lab assignment. Lab assignments turned in late without using a slip day will receive no credit.

You should only be using a slip day on a lab assignment if you have made significant progress on the lab prior to the original deadline for the assignment. The intention of a slip day is to give you enough time to put the last finishing touches on the lab assignment before turning it in (for example, if you have been facing a bug for awhile, you should use a slip day, which buys you time to get some sleep before asking your TA for the last bit of help you need the next day).

We recommend that slip days are not to be used if significant progress wasn’t made on the lab before the deadline, such as if you couldn’t make a lab section and are trying to complete the entire lab the day after. In this situation, it may be better for you to consider skipping the assignment and proceeding with the more current ones to keep pace with the course. Remember, you don’t need to get all points in the lab category to still get full credit for labs. Please see the Grading section above for more information.

To use a lab slip day, go to the Extensions tab on Beacon. If you have enough slip days remaining, you may select your assignment and your new due date. Note that you can only request at most 1 slip day per lab, and once you apply a slip day to an assignment, you cannot later extend it by even more time.

Project Lateness

For projects, you can use any number of slip days to extend your deadline. Each slip day extends your deadline by 24 hours. If you turn in your project late without using a slip day, you will receive no credit.

To use a project slip day, go to the Extensions tab on Beacon. If you have enough slip days remaining, you may select your assignment and your new due date.

You cannot use slip days for project checkpoints or Project 3B/C Final Checkoff (with the exception of DSP extension accommodations).

Extenuating Circumstances

We define extenuating circumstances as circumstances outside of the student’s control that directly inhibit the student’s ability to complete assignments in a timely manner. Some examples include unforeseen physical/mental health crises, technical issues (broken laptop), family emergency, etc.

In these cases, we will consider requests for extensions that are unaccounted for by your 8 slip days. You can request an extension through the Extenuating Circumstances Form.

If you’re experiencing extenuating circumstances impacting your mental health and would like to meet with a member of course staff to work out accommodations within the course, or would like to be connected to more resources, you can set up a meeting with us here.

We will not be considering retroactive submissions to the extenuating circumstances form. This means that you should proactively submit to the form before the assignment’s deadline to be considered. We also will be primarily providing extensions as a result of extenuating circumstances on projects. Exceptions will only be made in extreme cases.

The last day to submit any assignment is Monday, August 11th, 11:59 PM Pacific. This is a hard deadline, and we will not accept any submissions made after this deadline.

Student Support Meetings

Student support meetings are 20 minutes, online one-on-one meetings where you can speak to a staff member about DSP accommodations, extenuating circumstances, or general advice and support resources for success in the course.

You can book an appointment with us here, or by clicking on the “student support” tab at the upper right hand corner of the course website’s home page.

Processing Extensions

Extensions are not always reflected on Gradescope. You might see your assignment tagged as late on Gradescope, like this:

You can ignore that tag. The autograder score you see on Gradescope is your score for the assignment. The “2 Days, 12 Hours Late” tag does not affect your grade.

If your extension was approved after you submitted the assignment, then the autograder might mark your submission late and give you a score of 0.001.

If you see a score of 0.001, but that score is incorrect because you had an approved extension, then you can make a private post on Ed in the Logistics → Grade Corrections category, and we can re-run the autograder for you. Make sure to fill out the entire Ed post template!

It can take up to a week for scores on Gradescope to be synced to Beacon. If your Beacon grade still looks incorrect after a week (not earlier), then you can make a private post on Ed in the Logistics → Grade Corrections category.

Extensions Policy

Extensions will be processed on a case-by-case basis. Extensions are not guaranteed until you receive an email from us if you requested an extension through the extenuating circumstances form.

It takes staff 1–2 business days to respond to extension requests. Mondays through Fridays are business days, and Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays are not. If you request an extension request on Friday, you may not get a response until the following Monday. As a result, please be timely when requesting extensions. If you request an extension at 11:50pm on the due date, please don’t expect a 10-minute response time.

If you request an extension, but you have not heard back from staff, you should make your best submission (just in case the extension is not approved) by the deadline. Then, you can continue working after the deadline, pretending that your extension is approved. Remember, though, extensions are not guaranteed until you receive an official response.

Please do not post on Ed, email course emails, or email individual TAs/instructors about extension requests. This just creates extra work for us and slows down our response time. Once you’ve submitted the request through Beacon, we’ll process requests in order, and contacting us again will not speed things up.

DSP Extension Accommodations

If you have DSP extension accommodations, you will be able to request an automatically approved extension of up to 2 days on Beacon for all assignments.

We will release more details about DSP-related extension accommodations for Project 3B/C Final Checkoff later on in the semester.

If you have any questions related to your DSP accommodation, feel free to reach out to a staff member through a student support meeting!