<p>Hello all. My son is considering Cal Poly for ME. I have a few questions.</p>
<p>First, with the budget cuts, what has been impacted? I see honors is being cut and he’d assume 5 years. What else does he need to know about negative impacts from budgets.</p>
<p>Second, for engineers, how many students are in the largest lectures?</p>
<p>Third, scheduling classes seems fairly cumbersome. Is there a link or some personal insight on how the process works and how to use it most efficiently?</p>
<p>Last, he’s strongly considering ME, but is also interested in ChemE and CS. If he got his feet on the ground and decided to switch from ME, how difficult is it to change?</p>
<p>-Honors program is being cut, true, but I’m not sure if it’s because of budget cuts though.
I feel like overall the effects of budget cuts are not as bad as they were even two or three years ago. Conditions seem to be improving.</p>
<p>-For engineers the largest lecture is usually an intro class that includes all the new people in the major (usually freshmen). That’s just a basic class that introduces you to what the major is about, what you can do with it, etc. As far as I know, after that all engineering classes are pretty small, around 25 people, no more than 30 usually.</p>
<p>-Scheduling classes is done by last name. The order rotates every quarter (not counting summer). You get three priority registrations. These can be used starting your fourth quarter at Cal Poly and allow you to register before the majority of other students. Athletes in season, members of student government, ROTC, marching band, and probably a few others get priority every quarter. The registration process itself is quite straightforward. What complicates it is when classes fill up before your registration and you end up on a waitlist for a class you need. If this happens, you just have to come up with a plan to either crash classes or find an alternative class if possible.</p>
<p>Back in the day when I was an undergrad (we got classes by going to the giant gym, standing in line and pulling punch cards if there were any left, I’m dating myself) if the class wasn’t available, then too bad, so sad. Crashing wasn’t an option. What is that? </p>
<p>Also, what about changing majors, say between ME and ChemE? </p>
<p>Oh my gosh, we must have gone at the same time. It would take all day you would have to stand in the English dept line and then go to the History line etc. Wow how things have changed. Of course it was only 19.00 a unit when I went or 36.00 full time. AND I am not really that old.</p>
<p>Crashing means trying to get into a class that you could not enroll in because it was either full by the time it was your turn to register, or you do not meet the pre-requisites for it. The former is much more common. </p>
<p>You “crash” a class by attending it on the first day to see if there are any open spots and if the teacher will let you in. You can crash regardless if you are on a waitlist or not, although you’ll generally have better luck if you are on the waitlist. You can waitlist any class that is full at your time of registration, provided you meet the pre-requisites for it. Based on space and enforced enrollment caps, teachers can decide how many more people they can add to the class if there are people trying to crash. Sometimes they will go directly off the waitlist (so if there are three open spots, they first three people on the waitlist get in. Everyone else is out of luck.) If you waitlist a class during registration, you will know what your position is on the list. Other times, teachers will let people in based on class standing. This is common for classes that are graduation requirements. In this case, they’ll usually let seniors in first, the juniors, etc. Occasionally teachers will have you plead your case and then hold a vote to decide who gets, but that’s rare (though entertaining). There is no limit to how many classes or sections of a class you can waitlist. Also, persistence pays off - you can continue trying to get into a class for the first week and a half or so of a quarter. The longer you try, the better luck you’ll have sometimes, since a lot of people are adding and dropping things all over the place in the process of finalizing their schedules.</p>
<p>There is also no fee or commitment for waitlisting. You might waitlist a class during registration, but there is no consequence if you change your mind for whatever reason and don’t show up on the first day to try and get in. Sometimes before registration is over someone will drop a class and whoever is first on the waitlist will be automatically enrolled. If this happens, you are notified by email.</p>
<p>I think that technically, crashing is trying to get into a class without being on the waitlist. This might happen if you decided at the last minute that you wanted to take an extra class one quarter or something and the waitlists had already closed.</p>
<p>Hopefully this wasn’t too long and helped explain the process. Let me know if you have any other questions about registration.</p>
<p>As stated above, Cal Poly SLO does not offer ChemE as a major. However, Materials Engineering is pretty close, I think. Changing majors from ME to MATE is definitely possible. Best advice would be to get started on it asap by meeting with a college of engineering advisor. The process is fairly straight forward, you just have to meet the requirements set by the major you want to change into. This usually consists of a minimum GPA and completing some intro courses, maybe a few other things.</p>
<p>My ME son has been able to get into all the classes he needed, except for the quarter they didn’t teach the second chem class at all. However, a lot of waitlisting, crashing, etc. </p>
<p>They still have the best engineering lab class offering I’ve found after reviewing/visiting about 20 college (several engineering students in this family)</p>
<p>For the first quarter, they assign students to classes. Speak up if he doesn’t like the assignments.</p>