<p>Do incoming freshman sign up for their classes before orientation? I remember at the admitted student day they said something about mailing registration materials in May and that you can pre-register for classes and then the deans will review it with you and approve it or make revisions during orientation in August. Can someone clarify?</p>
<p>You will received housing info in May. You will receive freshman course info and pre-registration instructions in June or July. (I can’t remember which now.) You may pre-register on-line for classes as soon as your registration time & date goes live or anytime after it.</p>
<p>Your registration will be ‘preliminary’ and you must meet with an advisor during orientation to have your scheduled approved. Your schedule won’t be official until it’s approved. You will be assigned an advisor and his/her name will be included in your pre-registration materials. All freshmen will have a time block set aside during orientation activities so that they can meet with their advisor.</p>
<p>You will able to pre-register for most freshman classes during the summer. However, if you need to register for certain courses (usually those which have pre-requisites or are upper level) you won’t be able to do that until you’re actually on campus. Lab and recitation/workshop/study group sections are not available for pre-registration. You will register for those either during orientation or during first week of classes.</p>
<p>Thanks. How many classes is a typical class load? Can you register for more classes, check them out the first week or so and then drop the class or classes that you don’t like? Many schools do have this “shopping” option at the beginning of the semesters.</p>
<p>UR has has a drop-add period just like every other school. I wouldn’t refer to it as a “shopping” period. </p>
<p>Freshman are allowed to enroll in up to 18 credits. Above that is considered an overload and freshman aren’t allowed overloads first semester. 4 full time academic classes are typically 16 credits. Labs/recitations/workshop/study groups required for some classes are not counted as additional credits. </p>
<p>You will not be allowed to “over-register” and then drop classes. UR is small school and caps class size. “Over-registering” takes a slot that could otherwise go to a another freshman who wants the class. BTW, neither the registration computer program nor your human advisor will allow you to register for more than 18 credits. MORAL: Choose your classes thoughtfully.</p>
<p>You can change your schedule during orientation and during drop-add provided there is room in the class. After classes start, you will need written permission from the instructor to add into a class. Generally this is not a problem with large lecture-type classes, but may be for small 15 person-limit classes. </p>
<p>UR sets up many freshman-only classes first semester–including popular courses like Econ, Calc, Writing, Psych, Soc, Bio, Chem, etc so that incoming students will have many options and aren’t competing with upperclassmen for seats.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. So, since we have to choose thoughtfully, are there any Rochester sponsored class and/or teacher ratings we can review, or is the only option to go on rateyourprofessors.com?</p>
<p>There is an internal professor rating system. I don’t know to access it since I don’t have UR ID–which is required to log-on to it. There are some prof ratings on rateyourprofessor, but not very many UR students post there. Mostly because UR is a small school and if you want to know about a prof, you ask someone you know who has already had him/her. And sometimes because there is no choice—there’s only 1 section of the course and only prof who teaches it.</p>
<p>There was a big discussion thread about this about a year ago on CC’s UR forum. Do a search for it. Mostly over which freshman Bio class to take.</p>
<p>You got your student number in an email about finical aid and it tells you to use your Student number as your new login.</p>
<p>Use that number to activate your account. <a href=“https://myidentity.rochester.edu/newuser/init.jsp[/url]”>https://myidentity.rochester.edu/newuser/init.jsp</a></p>
<p>Then you can look through stuff like the ratings using your netID. They are not very helpful because of it just being numerical, but it is something.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.onlinecourseevaluations.com/login.aspx?s=Rochester[/url]”>https://www.onlinecourseevaluations.com/login.aspx?s=Rochester</a></p>
<p>Hey funhiface, I have access to the course evaluations (I’m a student) and overall pretty good knowledge about many professors. What courses were you considering taking?</p>
<p>One thing about pre-registering. Pick your freshman writing class and sign up for it just as soon as is allowed - they do tend to fill up quickly and generally won’t go over the cap. In other classes, my son has had good luck asking profs for permission codes to get into a class that is already full. </p>
<p>I think you can add or drop during the first week of classes without getting permission from anyone, and there’s a 4 week period of drop/add with permission. My son has found teachers and admin to be very flexible about adding within that 4 weeks. When my son wanted to add a math class about 3 weeks into the semester, the prof told him he’d allow it but that he didn’t recommend it because they’d already covered all of the intro material. My son followed his advice on that and didn’t add it.</p>
<p>S has found rate my prof pretty accurate so far, although he still takes it with a grain of salt. He ignores opinions that only appear once or twice, but if there is a trend, it tends to be true. </p>
<p>My son heard that two of the really good and popular math profs are leaving this year, so that’s too bad.</p>