If you receive an offer to Flinders but you do not wish to commence studying straight away, you may be eligible to have your offer deferred for a full calendar year of study at a time. Flinders can hold your place in a deferrable course for as long as two consecutive years.
Alternatively, if you are finding the transition to university challenging, you may want to seek additional support before making the decision to defer. We offer a range of activities and services that can provide you with this support. Please see Transition to Uni for further information.
If you wish to delay commencing study only by one semester deferment is not necessary. For example, if you receive an offer for mid-year 2021 entry but you wish to commence in Semester One 2022 instead, you can do so by enrolling in topics when enrolment for 2022 opens in late 2021, provided the course offers two intakes per year.
If you are a continuing student (have already completed at least one topic in the course) who wishes to take a year break from your studies, you can apply for a leave of absence.
All undergraduate courses can be deferred, except for:
If you are an international student you need to contact Flinders International to defer.
Postgraduate courses cannot normally be deferred, except for those listed below.
If you Accept your offer for a deferrable course in the Flinders Student Information System (SIS) but do not end up enrolling in the course or completing any study for two consecutive semesters, your offer will be deferred on your behalf.
To access the SIS, you must first:
If you accept your offer but then decide to not complete any study, you will need to ensure you withdraw from any enrolled topics before the topic census date . See Amending your enrolment for details about how to withdraw from topics.
Provided you are not enrolled in the course or complete any study for two consecutive semesters, your offer will be deferred on your behalf.
If you receive a Flinders offer to one of the following courses, you will be required to either Accept and Enrol or Defer by a deadline as stated in your offer letter to secure your place in the course. Please read your offer letter carefully.
If you change your mind and wish to commence the course after all, you can do so by enrolling in course topics, provided enrolment for your preferred commencing semester is still open.
For example, if you received an offer for Semester One and did not enrol nor complete any study in the course in that semester and Semester Two enrolment is still open, you can enrol in topics to commence the course in Semester Two, provided the course offers a mid-year intake.
Places in the following courses are highly competitive and only one intake is available each year. If you defer your offer by the deadline stated in your offer letter to the following year, your current year place will be offered to another applicant. Therefore, if you wish to commence the course after all, you will be added to a waitlist and if a place becomes available, you may be able to be offered a place.
The following courses also only have one intake per year and if you change your mind on deferring after the last day to enrol for Semester One, you will not be able to commence until the following year:
Provided you are not enrolled in an eligible course or complete any study for two consecutive semesters, your offer will be deferred on your behalf.
We will be in touch with you in late November of the year you had your Semester One offer deferred with instructions on how to take up your offer the following academic year.
If your Semester Two offer was deferred, we will be in touch with you in May/June the following year with instructions on how to take up your mid-year offer that same year.
Once you have received instructions from us on how to take up your offer and you wish to commence the course, you will need to follow the enrolment process.
If you are eligible to defer again for another year, provided you are not enrolled in the course or complete any study for two consecutive semesters, your offer will be deferred again on your behalf and the above information applies again.
Please note not all courses will allow you to enrol on a full-time basis if commenced in semester 2. Please seek course advice.