<p>At large public universities often used as safeties (directionals or flagships), yes, they’re randomly assigned classes. All freshmen may have to take a freshman seminar and they’ll be randomly assigned; or all freshmen take Comp1 or Comp2, but even if they’re in Comp2 they have no say in which one or it may just mean they’re placed into it second semester while they take something else 1st semester. They may be placed in huge lectures for their major’s prereqs or in subjects, like anthropology or geology, that weren’t offered at the high school level. They may or may not skip some introductory classes; they may or may not get into the honors program (they may not even understand what the honors program is). They may be told to get online and pick classes in the catalog and they’ll be assigned to some of them if there’s space. They may meet with someone who’s been designated “new student adviser” who meets with them for 10mn in August and tells them to take some classes that still have space based on their math/English/foreign language placement results or (sometimes) SAT Subject or AP scores. Sometimes they register for classes before knowing how exactly their AP classes will be treated or even before they know their senior year AP results. Odds are that 3/5 first semester classes will be “random” classes.
And investigating academic quality and depth at the college level is virtually impossible for high school students: how could they imagine that, outside accredited programs, there’s such immense disparity between rigor, demands, requirements, etc? Many don’t even understand that because courses are listed in a catalog, it doesn’t mean they’re offered every year. </p>