So the TAMU registration is all messed up tonight. My student got an early registration period due to being an Honors students. Unfortunately, the Physics and Engineering Departments forgot to open up the courses, so my kid cannot register for Physics or Engineering. By the time they fix it tomorrow, the time slot to register will be OVER and my kid will have to wait until open registration. In other words, after everyone else got to register. This happens OVER and OVER at Texas A&M. Do I sound frustrated? I am. And my student is even more frustrated. All the work of being in Honors, and there is no registration benefit at all. NO benefit of early registration. In fact, the honors kids with this first time slot are much worse off than if they were not in honors because they will probably fix it tomorrow but they will not let these first registrants have an extra hour to register. How do I know this? This has happened before. This is an engineering school. Figure it out Aggies.
Not only that, but there are no professors listed for math courses, the students in some engineering classes were told that the profs listed for engineering were wrong, but only some students were told the correct professors’ names, and most physics classes have no profs listed. For how long has A&M been registering students? Why can they never get this right? They are not too big to fail. They are failing.
My son will now be even more frustrated with Honors. Honors courses are not supposed to be harder, just more in depth. From the Engineering Honors FAQ:
Are Honors courses harder?
The courses are not harder or more work, but rather are more interesting and engaging as there is more opportunity to apply the concepts taught in class. There are also more opportunities to interact with the instructor, due to smaller class sizes (around 20-25 for most classes), and to work with more engaged and high achieving classmates on group projects.
The best professors, who are interested in working with honor students, are assigned to teach the courses.
Yet, for Aero 201H, the professor’s approach is to make the extra-credit exam questions required questions for honors students. So, for the first exam, regular students could add ten points to their grade by getting the extra credit problem correct. For Honors students, their grades were a percentage of 110 total points. As an example, if a regular student got an 82, plus the ten point extra credit, that student would get a 92 on the exam, an A. An honors student would have (82+10)/110 or 83.7, a B. If this is the way the grading works, there is no point in taking honors classes. Why ruin your GPA by signing up for Honors classes?
I just texted my son. His registration went fine: three AeroEn class, one ElecEn class, and a German composition class. His schedule is up on Howdy.
So sorry guys…wow, mine has had such good luck in the business school. Sounds like engineering needs to get it together. On the plus side there aren’t too many kids that qualify for upper level honors so hopefully it will work out. Best wishes for success!
@Beaudreau my son actually went to a tutor this year for his first time - he was amazed at the test information he was privy to, he had done it all on his own up to this point. No idea that tutoring had so many advantages. He still ended up with the top score in the class - 100% - but it was easier with the tutor notes & test examples. Maybe your kiddo might want to try that route?
@AGmom2 He is doing fine except for the so-called honors course. He should have As otherwise.
Thanks.
Yeah this is annoying as hell. I myself am in honors, but what advantage is there to have early registration when I can’t even see which professor will teach calculus and engineering at their respective time slots? I can’t even plan my schedule this way and will have to wait until December. So much for “priority registration”.
@AGmomx2 , did your son attend one of the local tutoring classes or did he choose an individual tutor?
He attends one of the off campus tutoring classes, along with most of the honors students that are in this course & a room full of students - it is not an honors course, just known for being a tough class. It is a review for test format - I think 3 or 4 days of intense review nights prior to the exams.
Regarding the professors for the math department - pretty sure they don’t name them in advance, unless they have changed their ways. TBD is the standard it seemed - my kids use to look at the professors previous semester course times & use that as an educated guess.
They used to show the math profs when my other students were taking the classes.
Right now, my student’s registration time is ready to end. Getting one of the earliest times to register was a huge disadvantage. Physics failed to open classes. There are only a couple sections open, and none of them fit in the schedule. One is for physics majors only. The others all conflict with other courses.
By Monday, when (IF) they get their act together, it will be too late for Honors kids to register. Their time will be over. And, by the time open registration begins, the good physics teachers will be full. You can look at any other subject and all the sections are open. NOT PHYSICS! Seriously, how long has A&M had online registration, or any registration for that matter? Why did they decide this was a good idea THIS YEAR? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it is not fair to give some kids a early priority registration time and then not open the classes.
Texas A&M needs to fix this by:
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Extend the registration period for Honors until at least Monday evening.
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Open ALL the Physics classes that freshmen must take well before the extended registration ends.
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Notify all Honors students that this is being taken care of.
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OR agree right now that they will force Honors kids into the sections they want. To do this, they must leave seats open in ALL sections until after those kids are forced into the physics classes.
NOTE: for some majors in engineering, students have to have 2 math and 2 science for auto admission to their engineering major. If they already have chemistry AP credit, they must take Physics to get into their major.
In other words, the fact that my kid was told “too bad - all physics are full” (completely not true - there are 0 seats taken because the classes were never available for registration) and to take it in summer school (YES that’s what they said) means he will NOT get auto admission into his major.
UNBELIEVABLE TAMU!
Should have taken that OU full ride.
@Beaudreau, I can add to your story about the AERO 201H course.
My son had to take a make up test due to a death in the family. The original test was out of 110 points. The makeup was out of 100 because he should have not skipped the test. Again, he “skipped” it due to a death in the family. He was treated just like the kids that actually skipped the test, which was permitted.
In another class, the prof had on the syllabus that he would drop the lowest test grade, then he decided to only drop the lowest test grade if your final was higher than the highest test grade. Yes, you heard me right. SO, if my kid had gotten an 8 on his lowest test grade, and, say, a 75 on his highest test grade, and say a 76 on his final, his 8 would be dropped because his final was higher than his highest test grade. But my son had a 40 (again, due to the death in the family), and a 98. So HIS low test grade was NOT dropped because his final (which was pretty good) was NOT a 99 or a 100 (so it wasn’t higher than his highest test grade). TRULY! He ended up with a C but would have gotten an A IF the prof had followed the syllabus.
I literally have many many more stories like this.
TAMU Engineering must think it’s Too Big To Fail, but it is failing my students.
@KievanRus, what are you planning to do about the scheduling mess? I think the Honors kids need to all let someone know what is going on. This is very unfair. There is NO reason why the classes aren’t open and no reason why they can’t figure out in advance who is teaching the courses. In the non-academic world, we all have to commit to our schedules well in advance. We have our hours to be at work and we do what we need to for our jobs. At other universities, profs have to commit well in advance. If fact, log on to any other university’s course list and, viola! Professors’ names are already shown for Spring semester.
To be fair, a lot of the time they don’t show the professors for math/physics/engineering until way after open registration. Often they even switch professors for some sections. So it’s not just Honors students that suffer from that.
@Barfly - on the second Aero 201H exam, regular enrollees had to complete two very difficult multi-variable statics questions. Almost nobody could finish. The honors students had to complete the two regular problems plus one more equally difficult problem. No one got all three problems finished. So, once again honors students were punished.
@izelkay, I agree. And actually I don’t have a problem with it if everyone is treated the same way. The problem is that sometimes they do add the professors at a later date, so some students are able to register for a particular prof. But my kids have had prof changes - from great profs to terrible profs - after registration. One of my kids had a math prof change that never showed up on the registration schedule. On the first day of class, it was a new prof. The students thought they were in the wrong room.
The real problem is that this semester, very few physics seats were open for the first days of registration, so athletes, disabled students, and honors students did not have many choices. For example. there were about 5 named profs. They each had one lecture time. So that means there were only 5 lecture options for physics. For each, only about 1/3 of their sections were open. For all the TBA profs, NO sections were opened. For the one prof whose lecture time worked in my kid’s schedule, there are no recitation and lab options that work. None. Of course these sections will be open before the rest of the freshman register in a week or so. But it’s too late for the early registrants to get in a class.
@Beaudreau, that is ridiculous unless the honors students have their own curve.
For freshman honors students, they have to take a freshman seminar. No credit. No grade. Lots of homework. If you don’t do the homework, you don’t get honors registration. In hindsight, that would have been a good thing. At least there would be a chance for a physics class. Perhaps my kid can eventually get the same guy he has now for physics - the one whose answer to a student’s question was “That’s the most stupid question I have ever heard”.
@Barfly and @Beaudreau, I have a daughter with the same problem. The physics department did not open any more classes. They told my daughter that they would not open any more classes until later because the ones they have opened are not all full yet and suggested that it is not fair that all the Honors students register first and don’t leave any spots for non-Honors. In fact, however, the spots that are still open are in classes that conflict with mandatory Honors family meetings or Honors ENGR 112 classes or mandatory Engineering Scholars Program seminars, and those Honors students now cannot get in the required Physics courses.
Congrats TAMU Physics Department, for unilaterally undermining the TAMU policy that Honors students get priority registration.
For anyone considering TAMU’s Honors Department, and thinking that priority registration is a big plus, please be certain that you are basing your decision on other reasons, whatever those may be. Unfortunately, the Honors priority registration is not all it’s cracked up to be. Also, my daughter says the Honors Family meetings have a large homework load, even thought there is no credit and no grade. Also, the Honors Family meeting is automatically placed on the honors students’ schedules and they cannot drop it or schedule any classes at the same time, BUT the Honors 112 class she needs IS at the same time.
@JKotinek Anything you can do to help ? Are you still the Associate Director of Honors & Undergraduate Research?
It sounds like the students should complain to both the Honors program and the Physics department.
Can the students sign up for everything but Physics during the honors registration period and then add physics during their normal registration period? They should be eligible to register during both periods. At least then, they are only looking for one class when everyone else is looking for four or five. I would think not many upperclassmen will be signing up for pre-req level physics so they are really just competing for a physics slot with people roughly equivalent in hours to them?
Try contacting this group http://hur.tamu.edu/Top-Static-Menu/Directory They developed the new honors requirements. Honors changed in 2012, the early sign ups however have been there prior to 2012 - not sure why Physics decided that they don’t have to comply to policy? The mandatory honors seminars are the new part.