<p>I have a late date (last week of August) for my UCLA orientation. I've heard that those who have an earlier date for their orientation have priority for scheduling classes. On the other hand, I've heard that scheduling is randomized so students have an equal chance of getting their classes. So, how does this class scheduling work for incoming students?</p>
<p>Once students have enrolled in a class, the seats are full.
Evidently, the earlier your orientation session, the lower the chances are that someone will have enrolled in a class that you want.</p>
<p>It’s not exactly “priority”; it’s first come first served with some kind of twist.
There’s no “randomization” per se, but all students will enroll in classes with their Orientation Counselor, but each counselor is assigned about 10 kids, and only 1 enrolls at a time, so you have to be lucky to be first among your classmates.
The twist is that the people at orientation will say that they keep some seats in certain classes “reserved” for later sessions so that students in later sessions can still get classes. But I don’t know which classes they refer to, or even how many seats. Truth is that even if they reserve seats, you’re better off enrolling in a popular class earlier.</p>
<p>If you click on the course info for a class and it says “some seats are held for entering students who enroll through New Student Orientation” at the bottom, that means seats are being reserved. Idk how many seats there are per session, but I did notice last summer that the number of seats in some classes were jumping around kind of strangely, so it’s possible that if you keep a close eye on those classes you’ll be able to tell how many seats are actually being reserved.</p>