<p>I did not have this problem at all at Bryn Mawr/Haverford. It was a minor problem at Harvard. I needed to stick around for a couple of weeks to squeeze into a large core science taught by a superstar professor (I got in) and a senior seminar outside my major (I didn’t get in).</p>
<p>At my huge state school this is mostly a problem for first semester freshman. But they also have some strange practices that hold sections for freshman and night time students.
You can usually get the class you want if you get on the waitlist, but the time isn’t always ideal. Also, a lot of professors will let students in off the waitlist if it isn’t very long, or if they are at the top, provided they are coming to the class and showing an interest etc.</p>
<p>FWIW, I have a couple academics in the family and I’ve heard multiple times that course availability is more likely to be an issue at smaller schools. It’s probably a combination of fewer courses to choose from - some offered only during certain semesters - and perhaps a greater tendency to cap course sizes at relatively low levels. That’s just the price you pay for a very small environment.</p>
<p>The only times I’ve ever heard about this with very large schools is in the case of major and abrupt budget cuts.</p>
<p>Has not been a problem with two LAC’s, a National University & a Regional University with my children, two are out, two are still in.</p>
<p>My son experienced this when he was trying to tie everything up to graduate. He needed one specific class for his minor (which was required at this college) that was only taught in the spring and it was filled. He met with the professor who wondered, “why do you have to graduate in 4 years?” Hummm… Anyway, he got into the course and graduated on time, but I was surprised by the idea of extending his college years. Of course, we put the kabosh to that, since we were the ones paying!</p>
<p>He did also try to take a winter session course, but there weren’t enough students, so the course was canceled.</p>
<p>No need to be snarky, Busdriver. Having taught at an LAC, I just saw too many students who didn’t really want to avail themselves of a liberal arts education. I saw dozens of kids who - even when registering for their first semester as freshman - didn’t want to take anything other than what was required for their major.</p>
<p>I heard another prospective freshman say to a dean (at the LAC!) “I’m not really interested in the liberal arts . . . basically I want to be an anesthesiologist and I just want classes that deal with that. I know all about poetry and critical thinking from high school, and I’m over it.” That student should not be at a liberal arts college.</p>
<p>On the other end of the spectrum, my intro classes often started out with 40 students who had been the last to register. But over 1/3 of them registered for a second class in the department the following semester. Sometimes you just don’t know what is interesting until you try it.</p>
<p>Sorry, got2be…sometimes it’s just too hard too resist. I just knew someone was going to say that was snarky :).You didn’t really explain what you meant in the initial post. You do have some good points, yet I can understand the frustration of a student not getting into their desired classes, repetitively.</p>
<p>S1 has only had to resort to sitting on a waitlist for a class once. He attended for a couple of weeks and a place opened up. I think that was sophomore year. He’s one that I wish would take courses outside his comfort zone, but his goal is to never write another paper again. He’s learned a lot in college nevertheless and he’s a servicable writer.</p>
<p>S2 hasn’t had issues yet. He got into a colloquium of about 30 for which you had to write a little essay about why you should be allowed into the course. Otherwise his schedule is not that weird. Arabic 1, basic Econ and a required freshman English.</p>
<p>I go to Michigan and I would say there are some big problems with getting into classes for incoming freshmen first semester, and for first semester transfer students. There are also some problems with specific classes (Engr100 the 2nd semester for a lot of freshmen, TechCom 380, some honors math classes, and I’m sure I’ll find out about others) but in general you will get into the classes you want 90% of undergrad.</p>
<p>Getting into classes has been a problem every semester for sophmore S who is a regular (non-honors, non-athlete) kid at a state flagship. Often, he does find interesting classes that he wouldn’t normally take. D, at a top LAC, has had some problems with meeting her humanities requirements with the classes she wants. Last semester, she “settled” for a class that was very good and learned something about a subject she wouldn’t normally. She is still working out her next semester schedule.</p>
<p>I’m wondering how much of a problem this is for engineering students? When looking at the required curriculum there isn’t much room for pursuing random interests (a few humanities, but not much). Many classes build on the next step, causing a domino effect. This is a BIG question DS will be asking current students/recent grads once all admits are in and he’s making a final decision. Are people taking longer then 4yrs to graduate because of study abroad, work study, or can they not get classed needed to stay on track (without attending summer terms). This would not be tech based schools (RPI, RIT, etc), but schools with engineering schools.
Any experience or thoughts?</p>
<p>I also think the problem is made worse by students who sign up for more courses than they plan on taking. They then drop one or two of them before the drop period. I suppose they drop the ones with the most work or worst teacher or that they don’t like. I really don’t get it.</p>
<p>My D at cc had problems with classes in major not being offered sometimes for a year. Son at honors state flagship obviously cruised and completed two majors and minor in a year. Part of why he decided to go there.</p>
<p>Blueiguana - that’s a real concern, and it will depend on the school. My LAC guaranteed that students in the sciences would always have a spot in a class required for the major even if it meant opening up additional sections and overloading professors.</p>
<p>Humanities majors weren’t so lucky, since their classes could often be taken in a more flexible sequence. You could also be frozen out of a science elective, and some general ed classes were notoriously hard to get into. Most students couldn’t meet their religion requirement until they were juniors, for example.</p>
<p>Sax’s concern about classes being offered only every other year (or even less often!) is also justified. Plus, there can be a huge gap in the curriculum when a professor goes on sabbatical.</p>
<p>A couple of points:</p>
<p>a) I’m notorious here for harping on the the financial underpinnings of colleges as a selection criteria. Why? Because it impacts things like course availability. This is particularly acute right now as almost all colleges and universities have responded to the endowment crash by increasing enrollment and/or decreasing faculty size. They can shovell all the you know what in the work in their happy-talk press releases, but when you have fewer professors teaching more students, there are consequences.</p>
<p>b) The easiest way to avoid ever capping a student out of a course is to teach all freshmen courses in 1000 seat auditoriums. You actually want you student to get capped out of a course or two along the way. It means that the college is serious about class sizes.</p>
<p>c) There are ways to make it equitable. Swarthmore caps the vast majority of its courses including freshman seminars that are capped at 12 and many intro level courses that are capped at 30. For the bread and butter courses, then add professors and sections, but it is still an imperfect science predicting what 18 or 19 year old kids will choose… If a course is over-enrolled, there is lottery. If you lose out on the lottery, you get priority standing for the course the following semester. As a pratical matter, freshmen should be armed with several choices for a first-year seminar – in fact, I believe they are asked to list three choices. Otherwise, I believe my daughter was lotteried out of one course freshman year (a fluke year since it was a course with four sections (capped at 12) and fluke over-enrollment). She took the course second semester and plugged in a different course from her “to-do” list. I don’t recall that she was ever lotteried out of a course after that, although she always went into registration with five or six courses on her list because scheduling issues (time of day) can complicate the picture if you don’t get your prefered time slot for one course.</p>
<p>d) College freshmen like to complain to their parents about every perceived injustice as they grapple with the realization that it is not, after all, a perfect world out there.</p>
<p>My daughter has not experienced this at her LAC. Classes are small and the college runs by lottery so if you have a low number one semester you have a high number the next. Freshmen have the lowest priority. That said, she has been able to get all of her classes, even with a high number. She did not necessarily get the professor she wanted if he/she was a popular choice but she did get the course she needed.</p>
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<p>He did two majors and a minor in a single year? Talk about course overloading!:)</p>
<p>I have one kid that had no problem at a medium sized school, and one that has had to find work-arounds at a large flagship-type (no true flagships in NY). The large U does have priority reg for honors and athletes, and then it’s by credit hours. Although D went in with a semester’s worth of credits and the advisors schedule all incoming freshmen, it’s still been a minor headache and so she’s taken 4 classes during breaks (2 at other schools) just to stay on track with her major. She is in a program which requires 10 prequisites be fininshed by the end of soph year and recommends that gen-eds be complete as well. In some cases, it was a matter of too few sections but mostly it was that a single section of a pre-req was offered at a time that conflicted with another single session class…no amount of early or force-registering can cure that problem. She’ll make it, except for a single gen-ed that she’ll have to fit in later, and has taken a few extra classes to round out her schedule/interests, but many of her classmates will not and that seems common among the health and science majors she knows. I’m guessing that this is one way they pare down or stagger the number accepted into certain majors since, for specialized lab facilities/fieldwork, they can only accomodate a certain number at a time anyway!</p>
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I’d rather have larger classes and never get locked out. It comes down to personal preference.</p>
<p>My daughter is at a state school as well and has had scheduling issues every semester. Honors physics lecture and Japanese overlapped both semesters her first year, so the physics prof gave her permission to miss two of five lectures each week. She took her second year of Japanese during the summer session to help loosen up her schedule for this year and now the Japanese bumps up against math. She somehow manages to take both classes and talks with the professor every week. I couldn’t do it (I hope she can).</p>
<p>I had the same problem at my state undergraduate and state graduate school. I at times got in by simply attending the class, even if I was sitting on stairs or the floor. After a few weeks into the class, the professor would let me in. It is worth a try.</p>
<p>Got2BGreen - I really do understand what you are saying; that someone at an LAC should be willing to explore nearly anything. I agree with this to some extent, but whose to say the class they got shut out of wasn’t an attempt to explore something they had wanted to for some time? It isn’t always as simple as saying they can take it later. Some classes are only offered every other year, and they may be abroad that next time. Or the professor may go on sabbatical. Nothing is perfect, of course, and life always has these disappointments. But we have to remember who the customer is. It is an extraordinary situation (in our country at least) when a provider offers a product that is sold at a premium price ($50,000+!! in many cases) and the elements of that product are advertised (the course catalogs), but then you get there and they steer you to something else, because what you wanted was not available. Some people might call that bait and switch. That might be a slightly exaggerated description, but it isn’t too far off. Maybe there should be a partial refund when people have to take classes that are not their first choice. I guess that will happen the same time an LAC wins the NCAA national football championship, lol.</p>
<p>I do think, however, there really should be no charge at any school for the student that is forced to go an extra semester or year through no fault of their own to complete an major. That is just outrageous to promote a product that is understood to take four years and $200,000 to obtain, and then not provide the required components to all individuals in that time-frame.</p>