I have two kids in engineering at TAMU, one is now a Master’s student and one is a freshman. In their experience with pre-registration, it is a big benefit to have honor’s and the ability to register on the first day. Yes, seats/sections are opened here and there as registration goes on but there is a big difference in engineering classes between teachers and the times offered. The last sections to be taken are always at 8am or at night 6-7pm, or have a teacher assigned that has a very bad GPA average teaching that course. They will not add new seats/sections until what is there is mostly taken. Another benefit to early registration is the ability to get coveted Core Electives before they are completely gone. The kids know which electives are fairly guaranteed A’s and which are not. My freshman son enrolled in one on 11/4 that had over 300 seats available, every one has been taken for a few days now and the sophomores/freshman hadn’t even enrolled yet. They will likely add a few more here and there but there are many more sophomore and freshman then the few spots they will add. There is not an online section of the class that they have to take during normal non-covid semesters. At TAMU the freshman level classes in engineering are very large lecture halls for Math, Science courses in the 300 student range. The Engineering classes are typically in the 50-80 range in person at Zachary.