<p>I'm a California resident, been accepted to all of the top UC's, but I'm shying away from them due to the recent budget cuts. There have been a lot of cases at the UC's of students being unable to get into overfull classes and taking five years to graduate. Does anyone know if this is a problem at Amherst?</p>
<p>I went to UMass (graduated in 07) and never found it a problem to graduate on time. I found people who couldn’t graduate in the four years with 120 credits were simply failing to do the work for whatever reason which had a pretty deleterious effect on their average credit load. Not being able to get into classes shouldn’t be an issue. Many majors restrict required core courses to only their students for this particular reason. Upper level electives may be a bit tricky, but since the registration system is tiered so upper-level students register first, I found it to be not much of a problem for most classes. In the end, if you ask a professor to overrride you into a class (which I’ve done twice, once because I wanted to add the class way after registration began, and once because it was already full when I tried to register), I’ve found it to work and heard of it working 99% of the time. There’s also the ability to take classes at any of the 5 colleges [url=<a href=“http://www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/courses/]Search”>http://www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/courses/]Search</a> Course Catalog<a href=“which%20often-times%20has%20non-lab%20component%20classes%20transfer%20back%20to%20umass%20as%204-credit%20classes”>/url</a>, so finding a course interesting / applicable to your major was never an issue.</p>
<p>I’m a current student at UMass.</p>
<p>Freshman year, you might end up with classes at non-optimal times, but it will never be so full you can’t find anything to take. Most majors do close off some classes to majors only and my department (and I know a lot of the other science departments as well) will open up extra lab sections if the first ones fill up. </p>
<p>My understanding is that most people here who don’t graduate on time either
a - changed their major late
b - are trying to double major or minor
c - took a semester off to either work or study abroad.</p>