<p>My son has only experienced this once at his LAC. It was for an intro-level class with a hugely popular professor. But, it was an ancillary interest for my son, not in his major dept., so not a big deal. (As I understand it, he’s on the priority list for next fall if he still wants to take it then.) His problem has been more often that the classes he really wants are scheduled at the same time! This seems to happen almost every single term. And because its a small school, there aren’t a lot of other alternatives. Plus he’s on the semester system, so in his total 4 years of school, he only has 8 terms to work with. Not a lot of flexibility there.</p>
<p>My daughter is at a large flagship state univ. She is in the honors college, but this school does not give registration priority to honors students – however, she’s always taken a very full course load each term and occasional summer term classes, so her earned-credits count puts her pretty high up in registration priority. The thing that gives her MUCH more flexibility than my son has, is that if something she’s interested in is full, there are many other options that either fill requirements or appeal to her interests because there are just so many classes offered each term. Plus, the fact that she’s on quarters, gives her more terms to fit in the various classes she needs or wants.</p>
<p>I believe both kids are in very good, but very different, college environments. My son is really a small-school kind of guy, my daughter is certainly not. So, I don’t think one is better than the other in a general sense, but I do think my daughter has had more variety and greater flexibility in her registration choices.</p>
<p>Blueiguana, I am in engineering and was specifically talking about engineeering.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in Michigan Engineering, I can tell you all about how course registrations works and any issues I’ve or others I know have had. You can PM me.</p>
<p>Many colleges have a 2-stage registration process. The first is “pre” registration when the student signs up for classes ahead of the semester – the 2nd is the actual registration after the semester begins. Sometimes things shake out differently at the 2nd stage. This could work either way – a student could be signed up for a class but bumped when the semester begins for various reasons, depending on the system in place. There are also various mechanisms for getting into a class that was initially closed to the student – often a prof has the ability to simply open an extra spot for that student, and sometimes it can be as easy as sending an email to the prof. </p>
<p>My guess is it also probably varies depending on major and field of interest – some courses are very much in demand, some profs just happen to be wildly popular. </p>
<p>I think part of navigating the college process is figuring out the rules of the game-- for example, if classes fill early at a given college, then students need to be very diligent in the process of signing up. If there is a lot of movement during the semester during a “shopping period” for classes, students need to be aware of that, and may need to physically attend the classes they are trying to get into. Things sometimes change – a prof. might arrange to move to a bigger lecture hall if things seem particularly crowed during the first class session, thus opening up more space.</p>
<p>Again, the system varies from one college to another, so there is no one-size-fits-all answer.</p>
<p>It probably would be helpful on CC if there was a thread for people to share experience about course registration systems at various colleges. This is one of those things that often is not considered or understood well in advance, and obviously can make a huge difference in the person’s college experience.</p>
<p>An important caveat of these programs is that they are often limited to one major only (no double majors or minors). They also put some restrictions on changing majors, depending on how much it changes your “contract” or “plan.”</p>
<p>With that being said I think poor schedule planning impedes a lot of students from graduating on time, and so I applaud programs that force students to think about it. Due to merit aid having a eight semester cap at my university, I pretty much had to finish in four years. I was also double majoring, minoring, and fulfilling the honors college requirements (a condition of my merit scholarship). Each semester before registration, I would write down all the courses I needed to take and then look at current and past course schedules to get a sense of when they would be offered (what semesters and/or years and if any of the courses I needed or wanted were regularly scheduled at the same, conflicting time, etc.). After that, I would plot out possible schedules not just for that upcoming semester but for EACH semester until graduation, ensuring I could fit everything in while still leaving a bit of “wiggle room” if something didn’t work out exactly. Maybe it’s a bit over-the-top , but I really do think it helped to plan out of my schedule in that much depth.</p>
<p>This is excellent advice for any college student…I know some students don’t look very far beyond the next semester and don’t spend much time with their advisors either. At D’s school, it’s very simple for students to run a report online that shows them exactly what classes they need, including all of the options for gen-eds, as well as which requirements they’ve already met. She runs hers at least once a semester and that helped to quickly identify any potential problems in time to enlist help from her advisor and assign me, her girl Friday, to the task of researching course availability at other schools.</p>
<p>I do wish her school had guarantees like this which cover not only class availability but also costs:</p>
<p>Elon also has a feature on their student website, where students enter their major, and the website shows them how all the courses they’ve taken so far fit into their major and core requirements, and what requirements they still need to meet. When preparing to register for the next semester students can plug in different courses and see how they fill (or don’t fill) requirements. You can also enter a different major and see how your current courses fit and what you’d still need to take. It’s valuable because many colleges requirements for graduation have become quite complicated (for example, 2 semesters of the same language OR 3 semesters of study of a particular area of the world OR placing out of language/culture requirement via test).</p>
<p>^Agreed, it must have been simpler in our day since almost everyone seemed to graduate in 4 years and little other than a catalog for reference!</p>
<p>My daughter is graduating from a public flagship in 4 years. She is graduating from the honors college (more requirements than general undergrads), from her major dept w/honors (requires more credits, plus a thesis), two minors, and a special certificate program. Plus she has had a work-study job all the way through.</p>
<p>This has been possible through long-range planning as mentioned in the earlier posts. We’ve had a spreadsheet going the whole time with all the requirements blocked out for the four years. Sometimes we need to switch around the blocks due to scheduling conflicts from term to term, but we stick to the program! ;)</p>
<p>She checks in with her advisors for confirmation from time-to-time, but what’s more helpful is us getting familiar with the published requirements ourselves and staying on top of getting those classes. She’s pretty good at it herself now, but for the first couple years we discussed it carefully between us each time registration rolled around.</p>
<p>This can be a problem at any college. If there are courses that many kids want, it is an issue. The LACs and other smaller colleges seem to be able to shift gears and offer more sections of a course when that happens a lot faster than the larger schools. It’s like changing the direction of a herd of elephants for changes to occur in some systems. </p>
<p>My son’s college was hit with this issue. But the capriciousness of college students often makes these changes ineffective. When certain classes were filling up with large wait lists, other sections were created the following years, but it seems as though the kids liked a particular professor or time slot. You can’t win sometimes with these things. I can say that with the smaller school, if courses are needed for graduating on a target date, most of the time these schools are more accommodating. I know with a number of the larger colleges, there was little flexibility in this regard. Simply too many students in that situations and they just had to come an extra semester to get their requirements done. There are exceptions, of course, but you can see how it would be difficult for a school with many students to be able to deal with this issue whereas things can be rearranged on a personal basis in the smaller schools.</p>
<p>I think just the opposite/ large schools have much deeper benches with many depts in the range of 30-50+ full-time profs plus access to an army of senior grad students and post-docs not to mention adjuncts who live around large universities. Much easier to find somebody to teach extra sections as needed. Many LACs have none of the above if they are in the typical smaller town. Also easier to add a section with demand from another 30 students to one with 5 extra students.</p>
<p>^Depends on what the course is…with the hundreds of classes meeting daily at the large U’s, at some point they just don’t have extra space for certain sections unless students will agree to take classes in the evening, which is not a popular choice among many residential students.</p>