How to Ask for an Extension

For over ten years, I taught undergraduate courses at Harvard in the Psychology Department and the Writing Program. Before that, I was a teaching fellow for many undergrad and graduate-level courses at Harvard as well as an adjunct professor at other Boston-area institutions. All of this is to say—I’ve had a lot of experience with students asking me for extensions.

We all mess up. We forget deadlines, we overcommit ourselves, we lose motivation and simply can’t get the work done.

It happens. The purpose of this post is to give you my best advice for what to do when the inevitable happens and you miss a deadline and need to ask for an extension.

My single best piece of advice is to be honest. Admit where you went wrong. Teachers and professors are human too. We’ve all had the experience of waking up 40 minutes after our alarm was supposed to get us up, or spacing on a deadline and having nothing (or something far less polished than we wanted) to contribute. We’ve been there.

What we don’t like (truthfully, what nobody likes), is being lied to or treated like we were born yesterday. When students came to me with very honest explanations of what had happened—they’d had a busy week with multiple papers due in other classes, their coach had called for extra practices or there’d been an away game, or even that they were struggling with depression and finding it hard to get work done—I was impressed with their character.

In every case, after an honest conversation or email, the student and I shared a moment of connection. I was able to acknowledge how life (especially academic life) often requires more of us than feels humanly possible and sometimes we get crunched and we just can’t do it. I could feel that the student was being genuine with me and, as such, I was able to be genuine back. Now, this doesn’t mean that I was always able to offer the extension the student wanted, or that I waived all penalties for lateness. Teachers are juggling a lot themselves—they may need to have your assignment in by a certain date so they can calculate grades by the university deadline or simply because they have other important obligations (professional and otherwise) in their own lives. They also have a moral obligation to treat everyone fairly and sometimes that means doling out penalties for late work.

But I will tell you that I was much more likely to offer an extension, or to waive or reduce a grade penalty for lateness, if I felt like a student had been honest with me.

My second piece of advice is to come up with the solution yourself. Be aware that you being late with an assignment may create extra work for your professor, and try to reduce any inconvenience you cause for them as much as possible. Imagine this scenario—papers are due on Friday and your teacher plans to spend all day Saturday grading them and writing comments. He’s going out of town on Sunday and the following week he has more papers coming in from students in a different class. If everyone in the class misses the Friday deadline, he can’t do the grading he was planning to do on Saturday and this is going to put him seriously behind. He’s a person with a life outside of school too, and getting behind like this is likely to cause him a fair amount of stress.

All of this is to say, if you know you’re going to miss a deadline, try to lighten your professor’s load as much as possible. When you email them, tell them the new date by which you plan to submit the work. If you’re speaking with them in person, send a follow-up email thanking them and confirming the new date so they have a record of it somewhere and don’t have to write it down themselves (this also has the added bonus of giving you a record of what you and the professor have agreed to, just in case they forget. They likely have many students, and many different kinds of deadlines, to keep track of.). And don’t wait for the deadline to pass before you email them; contact your professor as soon as you know you’re going to be late with something.

In addition to solving the problem yourself, you can earn bonus points by acknowledging that you will accept whatever grade deduction or penalty for late work is spelled out in the syllabus. Your teacher may still penalize you for turning in the assignment late (see earlier comment about fairness), but I can tell you from my years of teaching that when students did this it had a positive effect on me. Without exception, I would think to myself, “What a good kid!” Professors often get into teaching because they love the material and they love sharing what fascinates them with other people. There is nothing more draining, or joy-sucking, than spending one’s time caught up in negotiations about grades with students (or their parents). Play the long game here—ideally, you want this person to respect and admire you. If you’re ever thinking about asking this person for a letter of recommendation, or listing them as a reference for a job or internship, their opinion of you matters. That bigger-picture impression of you, that is, how the professor thinks about you as a human being and your character, matters much more than your grade on one assignment. So offer up front to take the grade penalty. Your teacher might apply it, or they might not. But I can guarantee that they'll admire you for taking the pressure off of them to waive it, and for solving the problem yourself.

Below are some templates to use when emailing your teacher or professor to ask for an extension or confirm verbal discussion of one—feel free to adapt them to your own needs. Remember to use the correct honorific (e.g., Dr., Mr., Ms.), especially if your professor is a woman. If you’re not sure what degree someone has, Prof. is always a safe bet).

Dear Dr. Franklin,

Unfortunately, I am not able to submit my research paper by the deadline of January 14th. I am working very hard on the paper, and I will submit it by midnight on January 15th. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and I understand that my grade on the paper will be penalized by a grade-step.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

Dear Dr. Franklin,

Thank you so much for your time during Office Hours today. As we discussed, I will submit my research paper one day after the deadline, by midnight on January 15th. I understand that I will receive a grade deduction for lateness.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]