@ucbalumnus - Agreed.
But D hasn’t had any issues with electives either. Her advisors told her to have two back up classes ready, but she’s never needed them.
I asked a few years ago on the UCB forum, but students then did not view it as a big problem (but some out of major electives like upper division CS courses are hard to get for non majors).
UCB does limit entry to majors based on department capacity to teach upper division courses. The registration system is multi phase, and departments can reserve class space by major and class level (and other ways) in the first phase(s). For lower division courses taken by undeclared students, there is a tendency to make the classes bigger (like > 1,000 students in CS 61A).
Well, I’ve heard this cited as the reason that a 5th year is often necessary at UCs and Cal Poly. I was on the CalPoly parent FB page and this issue was discussed there many times.
My daughter is a 2nd year student at a small school of around 5000 undergrads. She is in the honors program with priority registration. She hasn’t had an true issue getting into any classes. However for the spring semester she had two classes she was going to take that ended up being offered the exact same time. She was easily able to take the one that was needed now and postpone the other one without throwing her off track. It actually worked out well in that besides her senior honors requirement she will be taking her last honors requirement instead.
On facebook one parent complained that her freshman didn’t get to take a class but other parents suggested taking a general ed in its place. I don’t know if it effected anything. Another parent complained that it isn’t fair that seniors pick before freshman.
I wonder how it works for kids who aren’t honors students or majors. Being at the end of the line are they just out of luck?
1 Like
I think the whole “honors” priority is ridiculous. Why should students who performed better in high school get to select their classes first? My kid’s school doesn’t have honors, so that’s not the problem there. However, apparently the engineering students get registration priority even for non-engineering courses. WTH?
1 Like
@brantly What is ridiculous about it? Priority registration is a benefit used to sell the school to top students, ie, a selling point. Every school and program within schools have their particular selling points.
Do you mean math and science courses required for their majors, or humanities and social studies courses for general education?
Each campus may do registration differently.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/ug-outcomes has UC graduation rates. Here are the 4 year graduation rates and average time to degree:
Campus 4 year grad rate time to degree
2014 2011 2011
All 67.9% 64.0% 4.17
UCB 75.9% 75.5% 4.07
UCD 63.9% 58.1% 4.26
UCI 69.0% 70.7% 4.09
UCLA 79.8% 74.6% 4.08
UCM 45.5% 34.5% 4.37
UCR 63.7% 54.6% 4.25
UCSD 67.5% 55.7% 4.30
UCSB 69.7% 69.0% 4.09
UCSC 55.9% 54.5% 4.25
Note that these are in calendar years, as usual. Students who take co-op or gap semesters or quarters take longer to graduate in calendar years, but may not necessarily have extra tuition-paying semesters or quarters.
The school where my D has no issues is Haverford. Classes are all small, but there is no problem getting what you need. Something like freshman writing seminars are assigned before the school year starts based on interest and the school’s idea of what section best fits each student. They add courses with their advisors during a registration period, but add two extra so they can “shop” the first week of class and see what suits them best. Popular courses have multiple sections. Also, as far as I know everyone graduates in four years- students aren’t even allowed to go past four years.
I recognize that campuses legitimately do this as a matter of policy and that it’s part of the perk package to attract high-stat students who might otherwise choose a different college.
However, I don’t like the policy. My philosophy is that all students should have equal access to the foundational core of college. Equal access to courses. Equal access to majors. Equal access to advising.
Any course, required or elective, in Arts & Sciences.
My daughter is at UCB, it’s normal especially for freshman to not get everything (say get into 3 out of 4) that they wanted, but it’s easy to replace it with another class that they NEED anyway. And if you don’t get in this semester you should get in the next. After 4 years everyone should get all the classes that they need. If they don’t get all the classes in 4 years, it’s probably because they failed classes, or that they made a tactical mistake somewhere along the way (I.e waited until the last semester to take required class; taking electives instead of taking required classes early on, etc. ) the point here is that the student needs to pay attention and strategize.
My daughter said she doesn’t understand what the fuzz is all about. On the day of registration, even though it’s not her time yet, she kept check in to see how full the class is. And she adjusted her class list based on what she saw.
I’ve talked to at least a dozen kids who came over to visit my kiddo at thanksgiving and many said they didn’t get ALL the classes they wanted this semester either (kids from penn state Rutgers, Villanova, etc.). I realized the problem is not unique to Cal.
I can understand the college giving priority in courses to students for whom the courses are required for their majors (and that is what colleges should do generally). But that seems odd to give specific majors priority in out-of-major courses.
Of course, undeclared frosh/soph students are a special case (often a very large special case) where planning class size and capacity involves estimating the demand for each major and its prerequisites – and sometimes the college or departments may not anticipate a surge in demand for some major that they did not plan for to be so large.
Here is an example of how one department handles the enormous popularity of its courses: https://eecs.berkeley.edu/resources/undergrads/cs/degree-reqs/enrollment-policy and https://eecs.berkeley.edu/resources/undergrads/cs/degree-reqs/enrollment-policy/text-only
Since I have been summoned… Lol…Get popcorn… At Michigan I have slight input for both Lsa and engineering for an example of one. My son started out Lsa since Actuarial Sciences was something he thought about for a second. After his first semester he was accepted for a cross campus transfer into engineering. His curriculum was engineering since most first years take the basic sciences, math, English etc together.
SO, I was at the engineering open house and my wife went to the Lsa open house. In engineering they stated that the engineering students should not have an issue getting their classes but some Calc classes were close to closing. My son was in the LAST registration group and some spots were being reserved for international students. Sooo, I texted my wife and she in real time asked a live question about this. Yes, due to the increased applications acceptances there “might” be an issue. Well my son was #1 on one wait list and number 3 on the chemistry wait list.
He was told to go to the class, do an over ride and life will be good. The professors responded like lighting fast and their
was never an issue. Michigan knows how many kids will drop out after the first few weeks of any classes it seems. My son told me that after the first quizzes /midterm results it was like a mass exodus in some classes. Heh, Michigan is a really tough school.
But then he took two sciences with two labs with an overlap since it was the only thing that worked. Plus his other classes. He didn’t want to be like a normal kid and take just one science and lab one semester and the other the next. Agh…
Life was good until he ended up having 2 tests at the same time! He talked to one of the professors and told my son there was nothing he could do. (first time at Michigan that he was ever told no, or they couldn’t work it out BTW). So instead of dropping a class he went to the graduate TA and he told my son, “no problem” just come to x session to take the test. Problem solved.
As an engineering student, he hasn’t had problems. He is also credit wise a semester ahead so he has a cushion incase something happens.
What does happen is that you might need to go slightly out of sequence. Seniors do get priority over classes in his engineering discipline . He is actually taking some senior classes this next semester instead of waiting till next year.
But… I have never heard of anyone that planned with their advisor not graduating on time. (not including coop, internship experience).
@brantly I would be curious to know what your seeing even if you want to pm me.
When I talked to Michigan engineering on this topic when he was wait listed (yes, I called so shoot me.?.. Behind my sons back) they reassured me that they have never lost a student and they will work to assure that with good planning everyone graduates on time.
I know a multitude of people that are going and have graduated from Michigan and never heard of someone not graduating on time.
My nursing student at a direct entry school is finding this to happen some – and she is ahead of others in her ‘class’ because of AP credits so gets to go first. And still…
No problem at Bowdoin. S19 got the math section he wanted (there were two), the physics class he wanted, and he got into a 12-student Art of the Essay class (that was dumb luck because 40 kids requested but no students got priority so freshmen had just as good of a chance as seniors). His fourth class is a history class taught by the history chair so I’m sure it’s also coveted…and it fulfills a distribution requirement.
When he registers, he can see who gets priority for each class. All students send in their requests on the same day and the system prioritizes. Some classes prioritize kids in the major and minor, some prioritize by grade (including some that prioritize freshmen), and some don’t prioritize at all. This helps kids figure out their best chances of getting into any class. After the first round, students can see how many kids got into each class and how many spots are left. They then do a second round (again, everyone at the same time) and see how it works out. If you’re smart in the second round, you find a class that you need that looks like it has a number of spots available. He hasn’t heard a lot of complaints from his friends at all.
DD’19 is at a regional public of about 5000. She hasn’t had any issue being shut out. Priority is by number of college credits taken, and she came in with 24.
I sorta agree with @brantly . Where my D17 goes to school , a class she needs was already full before even Seniors got to register, as the honors students and athletes register first. Since this is a class that is required for the major to graduate, a good solution might be to hold back a few slots of each of the non elective classes so that at least Seniors can get them, and not some Junior or Sophomore that just wants to take the class now. I am sure Seniors can petition, and I get why these groups have priority for their schedules, but hold back some slots for goodness sakes. For S19 some classes he wanted for spring were full, but he found alternatives.