<p>I read this advice somewhere that its a good idea to always sign up every semester for 1 extra class than you plan on taking and then after a week or 2, drop the class you like the least as sort of like insurance or something.</p>
<p>What do you guys think of this advice? Is there any penalty for most cases to drop out of a class a week into the term?</p>
<p>It depends on your school. At mine, we are allowed to register for 6 courses and if we drop one within 2 weeks there is no penalty. This is what I did this year when deciding between psych and Japanese for my elective.</p>
<p>It depends on the college. I often signed up for and attended an extra class for the first week. Either because I was sincerely undecided between a few classes, or in case one of my preferred classes turned out super boring or super stressful. </p>
<p>Signing up for extra classes was common practice at my college, and there was no penalty (academically, financially or via pressure from our adviser) as long as we dropped the extra classes by a certain deadline in the second week.</p>
<p>This is an excellent method. Here we get to drop/add the first 3 weeks, though it’s difficult to catch up after the 1st week not being in class. Often at least one that you sign up for won’t be as advertised, and you won’t find it’s a bad fit until you get the syllabus or get into the readings. As an example, the most shocking to me was a class that was suddenly made entirely group work. Well, i stuck it out but many were quite angry they weren’t told of this before registration. In another case, a class i registered was cancelled a month later. However, I was still at 15 credits so it didn’t create a sudden need to pick a class among the few that weren’t by then full.</p>