Well, now that Honors priority registration has ended, they are opening up the spots apparently.
@gettingschooled, they don’t get a “normal registration period”. They get their 48 hour time and that’s it. So the fact that there were no physics classes available that fit in my kid’s schedule is just tough luck I guess. Now all the non-Honors students register, so the rest of the physics seats will be opened up and will be taken. Then, after everyone gets a chance to register during their time period, all students can try to change their schedules during the open registration period. So, during that time, Honors students can try to sign up for physics - if they pounce quickly when someone else drops it. The problem is that all the best profs courses will be filled, as well as many of the times the students need. What’s available, if anything, is often sections with evening labs, terrible profs, etc. One reason Honors students get priority registration, as I understand it, is so that they can find a schedule that works with the limited Honors selections and the mandatory Honors family meetings and Engineering Scholars seminars. But of course that is thwarted when one department decides that they don’t have to open classes for Honors registration.
What A&M should now do is tell Physics to force the Honors students in to the physics class they want, that they would have signed up for had it been open as it was supposed to be when they registered, and before the rest of the freshmen sign up. Physics is a lab class, so they cannot force them in to the class after it is full. They must do it now, before sections are full, and then open the remaining seats. How many kids is this actually affecting? Probably not that many - there are only so many freshman Honors students taking physics 2 - many don’t have to take it, many have AP credits, many majors take it later in their degree plan. There are certainly some taking physics 1 who also had this problem, or some who need to take a higher level physics class. But per physics course, there are probably few enough that this can be handled without causing disruption to the rest of the registration process.
Interestingly, just today a coworker asked my opinion of A&M and the Honors program. #earful
@Barfly I talked with my son today. He has heard there is some kind of power struggle going on between the University Honors, Engineering Honors, and Engineering Department Honors factions. He is currently in both University Honors and Engineering/Aerospace Honors and was able to register OK for his Spring Aerospace classes. (These are sophomore engineering classes and its his second year, but he is a junior in class standing, because of AP and other credits.) He is close to giving up on both Honors programs since it looks like they will hurt his GPA, as I discussed above. He needs to stay above a 3.5 GPA to keep his scholarships. He has a long shot at graduating Summa Cum Laude, a good shot at Magna Cum Laude, and should get into Tau Beta Pi (the Engineering Honors Fraternity). Latin Honors and Tau Beta Pi should mean much more to potential employers than University Honors or Engineering Honors.
@Beaudreau I’m in Tau Beta Pi and it hasn’t really opened up any doors for me. Most potential employers have no idea what it is. I think Honors would mean more.
Wow this seems really difficult. My S (an upper junior) has had early registration (not for honors) and never had that problem with it. Not opening any physics sections is a glitch this semester and not routine. It is however pretty routine not to know which prof is teaching a section. I hope honors administration or the engineering department can help get the lack of available physics sections fixed for your students. It seems this really should be rectified. If not take heart in that these problems can usually be worked out at the end. Even though it seems like their won’t be good options there probably will be. But it is a stress that they shouldn’t have to deal with.
I can tell you that my son didn’t have the first choice physics profs. He wasn’t happy about it but was able to work through it very successfully, crediting A+ tutoring and hard work.
@Barfly I’m sorry your son encountered all of those reprocussions from a family death. Im a bit confused by your post because I thought your son was a freshman but if so he wouldn’t have a grade yet. Just this semester my S had the flu during midterms and had to miss 2 days of exams and labs.This could have hurt his grade. One prof was taking a very hard line. My S tried emailing him and when he didn’t get the response he needed he went in and spoke to the prof during office hours and was able to work it out. My son told me he read the university policy on this and would have pursued it further if needed. (I don’t really know exactly what he had in mind.) I was just thinking that if your son didn’t actually get that C yet maybe there is something he can still do.
FWIW my son was eligible for Tau Beta Pi but didn’t want to mess with the required activities and definitely didn’t want to mess with the possibility of jumping through the hoops and not get in. In his estimation the honor society didn’t show anything that his record didn’t already show. I don’t know if he is right but that was his decision.
I hope this is helpful.
D starts TAMU Mays Fall '16. Oldest at UT which never listed Cal. professors during registration…very frustrating!
My S is in University Honors as a Visualization major in the College of Architecture. He has been extremely disappointed with the University Honors program in general, but he thinks it may improve now that the main faculty member who assigned the ridiculous homework for the seminars is no longer in charge of any aspect of the program. We’ll see. Also, he has figured out that there is really no way he can complete the University Honors program in his major because there aren’t enough honors class options offered in the major and because the program chair told him straight out that he could not complete a research-based Capstone Project in Viz. I realize there are substitution options (graduate-level courses, special project, etc.), so he may pursue them…but if the Capstone Project is really not doable, what’s the point? He did go ahead and sign up for a couple of honors classes next semester (he didn’t have any this semester because none were offered in the classes he needed), so we’ll see how he likes them.
He had a minor problem with priority registration, but it involved a major-required class that the adviser needs to “force” him into (it has openings but was not coded with the correct major code, so he and the 3 other Honors students in Viz did not look eligible to register for it…the adviser “forced” the other 3 in but had left her office in the few minutes it took for my S to realize he needed help with it).
Oh, and can I complain about McFadden? The entire ground floor is in serious disrepair with leaks/water damage in the ceiling tiles, and his room has leaking plumbing under the sink and rusting bathroom fixtures. His roommate turned in several work orders the day they moved in, and nothing has been fixed. Very disappointing. The dorm needs updating like nobody’s business!
@spectrum2, I do have a freshman but the one who I mentioned in post 11 above is older. Had he done something about it at the time, he may have had some success getting the grade changed, but he was not aware of the process for challenging a grade and unfortunately didn’t look in to it at the time. It’s much too late now.
As for my freshman, more physics seats were opened up immediately after my child’s time expired. Those seats were nabbed immediately by other Honors students who had later registration times. The registration time slots for Honors students has now passed. All other students will now have their opportunity to register and the remaining seats in Physics will be opened for them. Then when all students have had a chance to register, there will be the open registration time when students can try to revise their schedules. But we have been through this several times and I know that it is very difficult to get a seat with the few (and I mean very few) quality physics professors.
So all we can hope for is that my freshman has a chance to take physics, somehow, and that the prof will not be as horrendous as what my child is dealing with now.
Open registration began today and, surprise surprise, there are no seats open. Last night, when some freshmen had their regular registration time, there were no seats available in ANY math 152 classes. Zero seats! So those freshmen could not sign up for math. Since math is a co-requisite for the required physics, they also could not sign up for physics even if there HAD been seats in physics, but OF COURSE there were no seats in physics either. For my child, who needs both math and physics, tough luck. To top it all off, my child was told they would not force students in to physics because it is a lab class, and they don’t force students into lab classes because there really are not extra seats in a lab. However, today it is clear that they have in fact forced students into Physics 208 above and beyond the limit.
I am posting this so that anyone searching in the future for info on TAMU Honors Priority Registration will be able to consider whether it is worth doing Honors at Texas A&M. The Priority Registration program does not work and will not work as long as individual departments, such as Physics, can decide that they just aren’t going to open seats in all their classes, or even in a reasonable number of classes, so that Honors students can get a class. My child had one of the earliest priority registration times available. Why? Because that early registration was earned due to being in Honors and because of entering with so many AP credits. Yes, that early registration was EARNED. It was supposed to be beneficial. How wonderful, we thought! Our student will be able to take what he needs, at decent hours, from good professors, and will be able to take the Honors courses with small class sizes, which is a huge selling point of Honors. But the schedule my child ended up with could not be worse. Required classes not available. Times not available. 8 am classes on the same days with evening classes, and not enough credits towards a major to even justify going to school next semester. No way to get into a desired honors class due to a forced honors seminar that has no grade and no credit yet tons of homework. And no way to register for the classes required to get auto admission to the engineering major because there are no seats in those classes (such as math and physics).
This is a serious issue and worth considering for anyone interested in attending Texas A&M for engineering and/or the Honors Program. This issue was pointed out to Honors and physics people in plenty of time for it to be corrected, but there was no effort made to correct it.
The number of admitted students for COE went from 1,864 in Fall 2012 to 3,325 in Fall 2015. That is a 78% increase in 3 years, which is simply insane. In comparision Mays Business school has gone up 25% in that time frame and Liberal Arts has gone up 9% and Life Sciences has gone up 21%.
See: http://accountability.tamu.edu/All-Metrics/Mixed-Metrics/Applied,-Admitted,-Enrolled
This is what happens when a bunch of bureacrats says “Hey, let’s have 25,000 COE students by 2025!”
If quantity meant quality then MIT and CalTech would have HUGE enrollments. They don’t. They know quality is about selectivity.
The student faculty ratio at A&M is now 21:1 whereas the average at most major state schools is about 17:1.
For FALL 2015
Mays enrolled 1,089
COE enrolled 3325
Liberal Arts enrolled 1518
Sciences enrolled 893
Ag and Life Sciences 1399
FACULTY : STUDENT RATIO
Mays 157 faculty. 6.94 : 1
COE 452 faculty. 7.36 : 1
Liberal Arts 432 faculty. 3.51 : 1
Sciences 369 faculty. 2.42 : 1
Ag and Life Sciences 310 faculty. 4.5 : 1
Faculty head cout data: http://accountability.tamu.edu/All-Metrics/Mixed-Metrics/Faculty-Headcount
Wow @TexasAtHome, thank you for the data. That explains a lot. The 25X25 plan is idiotic.
@Barfly Here is another interesting data set:
http://accountability.tamu.edu/All-Metrics/Mixed-Metrics/Student-Demographics
It shows the total enrollment by Colleges.
The COE total enrollment went from 7877 in Fall 2012 to 10,501 in Fall 2015. That is a 33% jump.
Since COE has 452 faculty that is a 23:1 faculty student ratio for Fall 2015 when the national average is 17 and the A&M average is 21.
My previous numbers were faculy ratio just for new enrollees. An error on my part.
My son who entered in 2012 has been expressing concern about the program moving in the wrong direction. That was also the same year they modified university honors and the year prior to admitting students into their chosen engineering major on admission. I hadn’t realized how dramatic the changes are until looking at these posts. I hope someone gets a handle on this before they ruin a great school. So sorry to hear of all of your challenges. @barfly it sounds like early registration was a mess for your son, but again I will tell you that this experience was a fluke, at least based on my son’s prior and current experience. Even without always knowing the professor, early registration has been an asset. I don’t know if it’s worth jumping through the honors hoops. That’s a personal decision. I hope that next semester goes smoothly and that one way or another the spots he needs open up.
Thanks @spectrum2. He just checked and there are zero seats in Math 152. He has many friends who cannot get in any Math 152 section. Since it is a corequisite for Physics 208, they cannot get in Physics 208 unless they have a Math 152 on the schedule. My son has emailed his advisor who did not answer any of his questions but said only that he can sign up now during open registration. The advisor is not getting it - there are no seats. No one is going to drop a seat since they cannot switch to any other section. I’m happy that your student has not had this problem, but my other Aggies have absolutely had issues like this - not this bad though. One annoying thing is the number of times they signed up for the course they wanted during Honor Priority Registration, only to have the prof changed after registration was over. It happens in Physics, Math and Engineering often. The students who sign up early and get a great prof end up with a bad prof. I’ve always wondered, since it happens so frequently, if it might be intentional. Guess that’s one way to fill up the lecture hall when the prof is terrible.