<p>my new LU to be d noticed that many of the classes that she was interested in for Fall 08 term were full and some has had a waiting list, some bigger than others. is this typical? of each term, or only the Fall term?</p>
<p>What is normally done by LU students in this case? Sign up for the course and hope they make another section? (does that ever happen?)?</p>
<p>a related question: experienced LU students or anyone with LU experience and knowledge, did you try to schedule or at least think about the whole yr or just one term at a time?</p>
<p>It is typical, I believe, of most colleges, and of Lawrence. It might be true of any of the three terms. (Continuing students--those who will be sophomores, juniors, or seniors during the forthcoming year--pre-registered for courses in the spring.)
The pre-registrations of incoming freshmen are reviewed before the students arrive on campus and are not settled until reviewed by the students together with their (faculty) academic advisors.
The situation is rather fuild--there are usually changes. This doesn't mean that your daughter will get into all the classes that she and her advisor think she should take. There are waitlists and some of them can be long. There will, however, be plenty of interesting classes open. (Sometimes entering freshmen pre-register for courses they shouldn't be taking--courses, for example, whose prerequisites they do not satisfy. All of this gets carefully reviewed.)
Student do pre-register for courses for the enter academic year, but, again, there are many changes in schedules between the time a student pre-registers and the time classes, for any given term, start.
Don't panic. Students with low numbers on waitlists usually get into the class. Almost always, the students are very happy with their schedules.</p>
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Don't panic. Students with low numbers on waitlists usually get into the class.
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<p>If there are high waitlist numbers, does that mean the student probably has low chances of getting in? I guess that is a reasonable guess, but we found more than a few classes like that - ones that unfortunately would be 'justright' for her.</p>
<p>If she can't get into a class, a lot of the time emailing the professor and asking if she can be added works. Professors like interested students. I was having trouble getting into one class I needed, so I just showed up for the first class, participated, and then afterward asked the teacher to add me. Mind you, this was third term, and this class was larger. This would be a bad idea for language classes, as the professors prepare for them heavily--they give students names in the other languages and such. In Chinese, for example, it's pretty hard to choose names that have a good meaning and sound similar to the student's name. I don't know if it would be advisable to show up unregistered to a class as a first term freshman. Emailing is seems the better way to go about it.</p>
<p>For the waitlist question: it really depends on how many students drop out of the class, and that's dependent on so many different factors. Chinese has a high drop rate, but classes like Meditation and Virtue don't. Classes with harder teachers have a higher drop rate. Students have until the end of third week to switch, so there's a lot of time to finalize a schedule (even though, in some classes, that's when you'll be taking your first midterm!).</p>
<p>However, everything will get straightened out with your daughter's adviser when she gets to campus. Mine was extremely helpful.</p>
<p>I've never seen a case where a student is turned away from a class. Usually many people who register don't show up the first day because they register for more than 3 classes and then attend the 3 they want to take.</p>