<p>Son is getting ready for registration for his spring semester, second year, mechanical engineering, and he’s noticing a lot of the engineering classes only have one section. </p>
<p>Will more sections be opened as registration progresses, or is there that much of an attrition in engineering by the spring of second year that only one class of 80 students is enough to accomodate the remaining engineering students? These are basic engineering classes that are probably prereqs for later classes, so I don’t know that they should be taken out of sequence or at a later time.</p>
<p>Will more sections be opened as registration progresses, or is there that much of an attrition in engineering by the spring of second year that only one class of 80 students is enough to accomodate the remaining* [second semester sophomore Mechanical]** engineering students*</p>
<p>I don’t know how many MechE sophs there are …and they may not all be on the same track. If there are about 80 MechE’s per year, that’s 240 MechE majors.</p>
<p>plus all students in the other engineering specialties (EE, CE, AE, Environmental, Construction, Civil, ChemE, etc).</p>
<p>Some of the courses have AEM prefixes, so I’m assuming they are required for other engineering majors instead. That’s why I’m confused as to why only one section of 80 students is offered for the spring semester. Seems with a school as large as Bama, there would be a need for more than one section. With the rigid engineering curriculum, even with only spring semester sophomores taking a class, hard to believe there are only 80 mechanical engineering majors who are sophomores.</p>
<p>I do know for DSs Comp Sci curriculum there has been only one section of many of his (300 level) classes offered per semester. Don’t know what happens if you get blocked out of a class you really need, I imagine they have a plan for that.</p>
<p>* hard to believe there are only 80 mechanical engineering majors who are sophomores.*</p>
<p>* Seems with a school as large as Bama, there would be a need for more than one section.*</p>
<p>Bama’s size isn’t the issue. The issue is how many are MechE sophomores. </p>
<p>I don’t know how many there are for that group. There are about 3000 total in engineering. The largest group will be frosh. If about 700 per year for soph, jr, seniors divided by the various types of engineering may mean that there are about 80 MechE sophs. </p>
<p>The 80 limit may not be “hard and fast”. If there are 84 or whatever that need to take a class, they probably just expand the class size rather than split into 2 classes of 42.</p>
<p>Being too analytical, I guess, but it seems that a school with a large enrollment would logically have to offer more sections of any class, regardless of major. Just curious as to whether they take a “wait and see” position after advising and early registration to see how many sections of a class they truly will need.</p>
<p>^^not necessarily Monte. While it may make things easier scheduling-wise with multiple sections of the same course, I know that for many courses there is only one prof. teaching it so multiple sections may not be feasible.
That’s why (I think) there are so many sections of the general ed. courses, you get what you have to have and then keep flexible about the gen. ed. stuff.</p>
<p>Also FWIW, an Honors Hist course DS wanted was closed at 12 with a waitlist, it now has 30 students, looks like they work with what the incoming requests are.</p>
<p>Being too analytical, I guess, but it seems that a school with a large enrollment would logically have to offer more sections of any class,* regardless of major**.*</p>
<p>No, not at all. One doesn’t equate with the other. Bama has a good number of majors that don’t have a lot of students in them. It would be too expensive to offer multiple sections just because the school’s overall total enrollment is large. The class sizes would be too small to be affordable, and the school would feel the pressure to use grad students more.</p>
<p>In sequenced majors, like engineering specialties, it is ok to offer one section or few sections because those times are coordinated to not conflict with the sequence. </p>
<p>I really think that if a needed sequenced class has 5 - 10 students wanting in, they just will move the class to a larger room, or if the requests are too large then split and have 2 sections. This seems unlikely with a soph MechE class because it doesn’t look like there are 120 or so MechE majors who are second semester sophomores. The school uses a wait and see approach to see which classes, if any, need to be moved to accomodate a few more students.</p>