<p>And no, supposed “course lockouts” aren’t the reason for low 4 year graduation rates. How do I know? Because there aren’t course lockouts.</p>
<p>ChemE at UW Madison requires 133 credits to graduate. A typical student takes 15 credits/semester, and even less freshmen year. That adds up to <120 credits in 4 years. The difficult and lengthy requirements of the major are a more reasonable explanation for what’s holding up engineering students, not their course registration process.</p>
<p>Look again at AxeBack’s post. He specifically talks about students with enough AP credits to make earning the rest of the required 133 credits in 4 years feasible. </p>
<p>The problem is they’re locked out of registering for the classes they need to progress in their intended major, and as such are unable to take the classes they need and end up wasting costly semester(s) and taking longer than 4 years to graduate. AxeBack and the people he knows are aware of the problem, and we’ve heard many of the same complaints from home town Badgers.</p>
<p>Which classes are needed and unavailable? I want to hear about specific issues that other had–because I haven’t experienced any firsthand. </p>
<p>Occasionally, a class is reserved for Sophomores and/or Juniors, so freshmen and seniors can’t take it. This is a curriculum choice (that doesn’t affect freshmen with many AP credits). But you’re referring to specific courses that are off limits to freshmen who need to take them?? Please expand.</p>
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That was a different problem. That problem was a restriction on some courses that would only let freshmen enroll. Students who entered UW with a significant amount of AP credits would surpass freshmen status prohibiting them from enrolling in freshmen only gatekeeper courses. From what I understand, that problem has been fixed.</p>
<p>The sometimes occurring problem of higher level course registration being open only to those admitted to specific colleges and/or degree programs before being open to all other UW students has still not been addressed.</p>
<p>Read this part of AxeBack’s post carefully:
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<p>Can’t get admitted to their school of choice as freshmen frequently equals can’t register for courses in that particular school or can register for courses in that school after a certain date, but the courses are full by then.</p>
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THAT’S the problem. That’s what stalls highly achieving first year students at UW and prolongs graduation time beyond 4 years.</p>
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<p>So the implied problem is that lectures that would interest advanced standing freshmen would be filled up a few weeks after initial registration–i.e. in june.</p>
<p>I’m mostly familiar with the business school so I’ll go through that:
Suppose a freshmen comes in with many Humanities, science, and econ/psych AP credits, so s/he doesn’t need to “waste time” taking the pre-business courses or general education courses (which have open spots right now, btw).</p>
<p>Then s/he would want to jump straight into business school curriculum. Great.
AIS 100, AIS 301, FINANCE 300, MHR 300, Real Estate 306, RMI 300, Marketing 300, Marketing 305, MHR 305, FINANCE 305, AIS 620, and many other course have open spots and are available to all right now–in August. AIS 211 literally filled up yesterday. That’s more than 3 months AFTER these courses opened up to everyone at UW.</p>
<p>In other words, any potential course that a freshmen could desire to take at the business school is available. We’re not talking about courses that the generic freshmen could take–those are obviously reserved for freshmen. We’re talking about courses that only a freshman who tested out of econ 101, 102, and psych 202 via CLEP/AP and took intro business courses at a community college would be interested in. Even these unique students have every option they could ever desire.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way: when I was a sophomore I decided to try out some business school courses without having applied to the b-school yet. Thus, I couldn’t sign up for my classes at the same time as business students because they had priority registration. I ended up registering 3 weeks later, after all the freshmen. </p>
<p>That semester, I ended up taking Marketing 300, OTM 300, RMI 300, Accounting 100, and Psych 509…The same schedule that an admitted business student would take. I had no barriers.</p>
<p>Good for you, but it doesn’t turn out that way for every UW student faced with similar circumstances. If it did, AxeBack wouldn’t have heard of any problems, and neither would we.</p>
<p>It’ll turn out that way for every freshman who wanted to take business courses in Fall 2010–otherwise the lectures wouldn’t be open ;)</p>
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No. And it’s not an implied problem. It’s real, and it’s stalling graduation times.</p>
<p>The problem is that the next courses high-credit freshmen need to take in their intended degrees’ course sequence requirements are full before registration is open to those not already admitted to those particular UW colleges/programs. </p>
<p>Not sure why you think it’s a problem only in June. It’s a problem when registering for first year spring semester courses, too. And it’s a recurring problem if college/degree program admissions occur beyond the fall semester of a students 2nd year.</p>
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So… UW only has a business school? Hardly.</p>
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<p>As I’ve shown, it’s not real in the business school–one of the few competitive colleges at UW. Please show me a college where incoming freshmen are locked out, and then you might have a point. </p>
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<p>I use fall semester because it’s a worse case scenario for advanced standing freshmen–they’re potentially registering in July even though they’re trying to take courses that mostly sophomores/juniors take. As I’ve shown, this isn’t an issue because many such courses are open. The situation is even better in spring, where these students are often registering at the same time as normal sophomores.</p>
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You’re a real waste of time. I’m not using the business school to make sweeping generalizations about UW. I’m simply using it as a good counterexample.</p>
<p>Show me the courses that these freshmen can’t take. I’ve showed you the ones they can take.</p>
<p>I’m not discrediting you; you’re discrediting yourself. I was hoping you’d actually have some real issues that UW could address. Constructive criticism is always helpful. But you’ve got nothing. Ironically, you’re addressing an area that UW excels at: course selection (HUGE) and registration (effective).</p>
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And yet the spring semester is the one AxeBack is talking about when he says people are wasting next semester. Look at the month he posted: November.</p>
<p>What you’re not seeming to understand is that the course lock-out problem starts out bad fall semester of first year and gets progressively worse each semester UNTIL students are admitted to their intended colleges/degree programs.</p>
<p>Yes, I understand that you hold this baseless opinion and I won’t continue arguing it.</p>
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What makes you think that stalling graduation times by restricting course registration isn’t a real issue that UW needs to address?</p>
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Baseless? It’s not just me.</p>
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Good. It would be better to fix the problem, no?</p>
<p>Geeeez…</p>
<p>There is no doubt that a four-year graduation at UW-Madison takes planning, and lots of it. The course selection to fill GenEd requirements, even compared with other large publics, is staggering. My D, who is leaving today for Madison to begin her sophomore year, is meeting with one of her THREE advisors on Tuesday. They have been EMailing for a month discussing a plan of attack for Spring 2011 registration because she is double-degreeing, and wants to do it in 4 years, including maybe 2 summers.</p>
<p>It…can…be…done. But, if you don’t have a clue early on, or decide to switch majors outside a specific college, there is the potential/probability of having taken an off-track class or two, but in the grand scheme of things, who’s to say that’s bad?</p>
<p>I keep going back to the breadth & scope of classes offered. With such an array, isn’t the bottom line to shape these young people–especially the ones who aren’t at Madison just going through the motions–into free-thinking graduates who are more desirable to hire? The alumni network is absolutely killer–it’s already worked in my D’s favor this summer, when she was hired as an intern, then paid worker, over a couple UIUC’ers. And I’m from Illinois.</p>
<p>Posters with no firsthand experience of what goes on at Madison, that read statistics then wail that the sky is falling, have no business here. Barrons has repeatedly posted about the moves the University will be making to improve the 4-year graduation rate, and D’s advisor told her in an EMail that he would explain the upcoming intra-college improvements when they meet Tuesday.</p>
<p>The two largest schools on campus have no advanced applications programs–L&S and Ag and Life Sciences. Only Journalism School requires a second application and that impacts about 250 potential students. Mostly based on GPA and writing ability–not classes taken. So it is highly unlikely than many people would even run into having to apply to a major later. Business and Eng are applied to in Freshmen Year and there is little reason not to be able to meet the pre-reqs. </p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> Applicants | School of Journalism & Mass Communication](<a href=“http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/prospective-students/undergraduate-applicants]Undergraduate”>http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/prospective-students/undergraduate-applicants)</p>
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Yes. That’s the gist of the problem. Why is graduating in 4 years SO MUCH MORE difficult at UW and take so much more planning than at any of UW’s peers? They’re also large publics with myriad course choices and students who double and even triple major. And yet UW is the only one (except GA Tech - majority of undergrads are in engineering) that struggles with a low 49.7% 4-year graduation rate.</p>
<p>AxeBack supplied an answer. Students are forced to waste semesters waiting to get into colleges/degree programs when they should have been able to continue to progress through their degree requirements.</p>