It is my understanding students sit and pick freshman courses at Student Orientation. If you attend S.O. in August, will courses already be booked by all the students that attended the July sessions?
The chance that a freshman class would be closed is negligable. As more need for classes options increase, they open new slot availabilities. That’s what they told us as we were also concerned. On the day it turned out exactly as what was told to me; they opened new time sections for those needed classes like math and a social science class my son wanted. You shouldn’t have a problem filling your schedule. If by any stroke of bad luck happens and you get locked out of a class, just fill it with a social science or some other class that doesn’t have a pre-requisite.
One good suggestion to students attending the Student-Orientation when they sit down to help you set up your schedule. You might consider keeping on hand about 7 classes that you’d like to take. Typically you will take 4 or 5 courses the first semester which is 16-17 credits. If you have an additional 2 or 3 it might be a good idea since there may be conflicting times that you dont like (too early, too late). So you try one of the reserve classes and see if their time slots are slightly better.
Accepted students should probably get to know and practice with [url=<a href=“https://yacs.cs.rpi.edu/%5DYACS%5B/url”>https://yacs.cs.rpi.edu/]YACS[/url]. It’s not officially what you use to set up your classes but it is definitely a great helping tool to figure out professors and time availabilities.
They reserve seats in all the underclassmen courses for incoming freshmen students in each orientation session - having an earlier or later registration time/SO will not impact course registration for freshmen or in required courses for any RPI student. In addition, if a course is full you can just get in by emailing the professor or if it’s required for your major RPI will guarantee that you get into the course - your advisor just needs to add you in manually by signing a form.
I know it’s a pretty common concern since other colleges are stricter with course registration, but RPI wants students to get into the courses they need to graduate. They make it pretty easy.