So my daughter is a freshman at a small LAC that has a very good reputation and is known to have an excellent art program. She was in the last group to register for 2nd semester and I know as a freshman it was going to be tough. But I was really shocked to see the majority of classes full or nearly full. All of the art classes open to freshman were full, and even the waitlists were full, for half of the freshman class before they even registered. She has emailed the professors to inquire if she can get on the waitlists but itâs not looking good and she is really disappointed. I am just wondering is this a typical experience at many LACâs or not? Am I wrong to expect more?
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As a parent, your only involvement should be encouraging your daughter to contact her advisor, head of the department, etc.
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Art class capacity is likely constrained by facilities as well as instructors.
However, if any of the courses are critical prerequisites for the art or any other major, then they really should have reserved space for frosh who need them.
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To answer your question, yes you should be surprised this one time. But no other times because now you know the brochures and emails are marketing and fluff. And yes yiu should expect more but that wonât change anything unfortunately. These are businesses and they have to optimize their resources.
People assume that elite schools with high price tags will ensure their kids get not just required but desired classes. Unfortunately itâs not always true whether at large, mid-size or small schools.
They likely ensure they can accrue a schedule to graduate on time. But availability of classes, services or otherwise is not necessarily better.
Hope she can find a class and professor she will enjoy.
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Yes.
It depends. For classes that are needed for majors, generally no. For popular electives it can be, but it gets better as you move up the food chain. Anecdotally, Collegekid2 went to an LAC that has a famous art class that it took her until 2nd semester Junior year to get into!
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At a small LAC your daughter should have an advisor and this is a big part of their role. Your daughter should work with them to create strategies for course selection, ask for advice, get ideas about alternatives, and learn what she can expect about art course registration over the next few years.
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I agree that this is something for your D to handle herself with her advisor. If these courses are needed for her major, she can also go talk to the art department directly.
FWIW, Iâm sorry sheâs having this experience.
I had the same experience at my alma mater (not an LAC but an Ivy) years ago. Disheartening to not get the classes you really want. I remember going to course registration and then course exchange (of which I still have nightmares) with a long back up list of options for electives. Freshman year I got 0 of my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice electives. I ended up with two classes/semester that I had zero interest in. Not the best way to start out college life but it got better as I got further along. Once I got to 2nd semester sophomore year, I always got my preferred schedule.
One of my main worries of my D going to a huge public was ease of scheduling/registration but itâs been absolutely seamless and after 5 semesters, sheâs never once not gotten into a class she wanted (it may not be at her preferred time, but sheâs gotten her courses, including first choice of electives). I think this is one of the fallacies out there that small schools = ease in course registration and big schools = nightmare. Definitely has not been our experience at all.
Hope your daughter is able to get into a class sheâs excited about!
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My D21 has gotten all the classes she has wanted as a first year at a LAC and she jokes that who would want her STEM heavy schedule?
I do very much empathize with the OPâs daughter who was excited about art courses as a primary interest at her school and has been shut out. To me, that is very different than just missing out on fun electives first year.
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Where would the funding for additional sections come from? Additionally, there may be space constraints.
Regardless, while you can share strategies with your daughter, any communication to the college needs to come from her.
As for the course selection issue, too little info is provided. Is she a potential art major that canât get into a required prereq? Or is she trying to get into very popular electives or a required course that is full at noon but has plenty of space at 8 am? The former would be a potential issue. The latter is not unique to LACâs.
I just read an article that stated that colleges are having a hard time hiring and retaining professors after the pandemic. Although these course registration nightmares have been happening for decades, this article was predicting that itâs bad and itâs only going to get worse. The problem is that the colleges need the revenue so they are not lowering enrollment at all. I know at my Dâs college freshmen have yet to register for J term and there is almost nothing left to register for. Most courses that are left are upper level courses that freshmen canât even take. Luckily my D is a sophomore but she needed to have a Plan A, B, C, and D for spring registration and even then she had to make some changes.
One thing I do is check the registration page frequently over Christmas break to see if anything opens up. Last year she was able to get into 2 classes that werenât top choices but were at least better than the ones she originally registered for. I donât contact the school at all but I do help her behind the scenes which may not work for everyone but it works for us.
Also, make sure you know how registration times work. My D dropped a class first semester last year. Her advisor said it was no big deal. Well it is a big deal because now she has less credits than most of her fellow sophomores and they base registration times on the number of credits the student has. Just something they need to be more transparent about as this will continue to effect her as she tries to move into upper level courses in her major.
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To clarify, my daughter plans to be a Biology major and an Art minor. She is trying to get in ANY required prereq art class with any professor, she doesnt care at this point which one it is. This is not a popular elective course. (All the art classes open to freshman are only prereqs anyway.) By the time she, and half of the freshman class registered, there was not one single art class available to freshman. And the waiting lists were closed. That is what I think is unacceptable. It would be one thing if it just didnt work out for my daughter but another if half of the freshman class (350 students) had no access to intro level required art classes. The ironic thing is that this is a school that has the motto âCreative Thought Mattersâ.
As for the question where would they get the funding? Donât know (perhaps collective tuition from all students?) but like any business that I pay for I expect to receive what I paid for and I also believe in speaking up when something is not right. Yes, my 18 yo kid has emailed several profs asking to be on their waitlists even though the waitlists are also filled to capacity and has emailed the dept head. I will encourage her to speak to her advisor (good idea) but her advisor is a Biology professor so not sure if it will do much good but itâs worth a try.
Also some posters here seemed to be implying that I am expecting better service b/c itâs a private LAC. I just want to say that is not the case at all - no matter what the size of the school, or if itâs private vs public, I would expect better access. After scholarships, we actually are paying equilavant to a public university so please dont think I am paying more and so expect more. If I gave that impression in my original post I did not mean to. Please note that I am a freshman parent with no other children and this is all really new to me, sometimes the tone of some of the posters is a tad harsh and posters may want to consider their tone a bit, Iâd like to think this is a friendly community. I do appreciate all your responses nonetheless and appreciate that many of you have much more experience than I do.
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@MAmom111 â thank you, this is all very helpful and appreciate the suggestions. I am sorry your daughter was given that advice.
Wealthy private schools may be able to maintain each department at a level to have enough excess capacity that they can accommodate all interested students in the classes and majors, although even some wealthy ones may have some undersized departments, or those which were caught unaware by a large fast increase in student interest (computer science is sometimes an example of this). Less wealthy ones may not, and may have to limit access to majors formally (e.g. admission by major) or informally (you are out of luck if you are unable to get into the prerequisites because they are full).
So much has to go into opening new sections of courses even beyond budget (staffing, space, etcâŠ).
I can almost guarantee that the professors and department heads understand the frustration of students who canât get the classes they need or want, even first year students. They want their students to stay in the department and the school and itâs really, really hard for most professors to see that students canât get into classes.
It would be beyond pesky for you to request new sections. It would not at all be pesky for your daughter to make the request.
The chances may not be very good, but you never know.
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You should feel that you should get better access because the schools basically imply this
My daughter is at a public honors college. She has to take two colloquiums. They are all promised to be the really cool, interesting titles. Thatâs up for debate of course as cool means different things to different people.
She was supposed to schedule early as an honors student. A quarter of the class had an IT glitch. The school is aware. Shut out of her top 3. They opened 3 more slots in each. She was ready like on a Southwest Airlines boarding pass 24 hrs b4 the flight. Still others got the 3 slots first.
She is going to take another elective and hope to get back to this freshman recommended class next year.
It stinks but in these smaller schools, they have promised this small, more intimate education. They may be delivering. But just to a select view.
At Alabama (very large), my son has never missed getting a class he wanted. Maybe just pure luck.
But yes, you SHOULD expect more.
But like most marketing, sometimes you are deceived. And unfortunately this product is so large itâs hard to adapt in a way to bring significant impact short of leaving. And most arenât going to leave because of this. Theyâll take a maymester, summer or later class instead.
It does make sense to contact the professor and advisor, let them know she wants the class, and check the schedule daily for cancellations. You never know. Good luck.
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Iâve had kids at four different universities, this was always an issue. One of their schools utilizes the Coursicle app, you can get alerts when a spot opens up.
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That sounds like an amazing take-up of art classes! Any chance their offerings are lower than usual this year? (possibly for pandemic-provoked reasons?)
This is probably the most cynical thing that I have said on this site, but as far as colleges are concerned, parents are the ATM and between payments (promptly if you please) you are not only not a customer, you do not exist. The black box that is what you pay and what you get is completely opaque, and as a parent you get 0 respect or credit for the fact that you are forking out lots of money for your student to attend. You wonât have to look hard to find the fine print that says something like âclass availability is subject to change at any timeâ.
Thus endeth the rantâŠ
The advice about talking to her advisor is spot on- and one of the questions she might ask is if he could point her to somebody in the art department who could advise on her art minor (particularly in terms of structuring her course scheduling with this set back) Regardless of size, colleges are incredibly medieval in their fiefdoms, and there are almost always little ins and outs about how things work in real life that only âinsidersâ know. A local guide can help.
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Studio art offerings are limited both by facilities â there are only so many painting studios, ceramics studios, or sculpture studios â and by the small class size for the classes, often 10-16 students max.
Encourage your student to schedule a meeting with her advisor to talk strategies about course registration. 1st years registering for spring semester have the lowest registration priority and the roughest process. By fall of sophomore year, she will have a higher registration priority and will likely be able to get into preferred classes.
In the meantime, she can talk to her advisor and email the professor teaching her top studio classes and ask if there is a way to get on the waitlist as a prospective studio art minor.
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I think the problem is that Art is her minor, not major, and the school may not recognize minors as priority. If the school has a lot of art majors, it is going to give priority to them. You have the right as a paying parent to contact the school and say they should have more art classes available, but then they might have to drop other classes, like biology. Be careful what you wish for.
When my daughter went to freshman orientation in one of the last groups, it looked like she wouldnât get any of the classes she needed (I could follow registrations and openings on the website, and it showed all her required classes as âfullâ), but those classes were âfullâ because the department had blocked them for majors (not minors, which arenât declared as freshmen). Once all the declared majors had registered, they release the spots to others (I think there were only 1-2 spots for non-majors in most classes).
Other daughter had a coach who had a little power in getting her into sections that fit better with the training schedule. It happened once because the school screwed up the registration time for daughter, and Iâm sure some other student was unhappy at getting pushed to the other lab time.
It is unfair that your daughter didnât get into any art classes, but it sounds like a lot of students didnât (thus the full waitlists). The way around this is to become an art major, not minor. Sheâll still have time to get in the pre-recs for a minor as a sophomore and then take the rest of the minor as a jr/sr.
Get in the other requirements, like a writing course or a PE class (if required or just for fun). Junior year abroad is the perfect time for art classes!
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My daughterâs small private LAC also had issues with freshmen registration last year (sheâs a sophomore now). A lot of that had to do with the pandemicânobody left campus for a study abroad last year, plus freshmen werenât on campus in the spring, they could only take remote classes, etc. My daughter thankfully wasnât affected (she got all her 1st and 2nd choices and loved all her classes), but some of her friends had troubles even getting into courses in their intended major (although some additional sections were indeed opened later, but it was for Psychology, not Art classes). Itâs been much smoother this year. Your daughter will get higher priority as a sophomore, and it will be easier from then on, but I understand the frustration. I agree with the others that she should talk to her advisor and that parents shouldnât interfere. Itâs also a good idea to keep checking the class capacity closer to the start of the semester and during the add/drop period. Good luck!
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