Hello fellow parents! I have just spent the better part of the day fighting to help my child, a junior at Tufts, get into a class required in said child’s major to graduate - with no success. It blows my mind that after all effort to get into college, once they are there they cannot get into the advertised classes, despite staggering tuition. I have three in college and although Tufts is the worst, all three have struggled and compromised on their course of study based on seat availability. How far up the food chain would you all go to force the issue?
First off, your kid should do this. He is a junior in college.
Second, are there any hacks for this problem? what do other kids do? One of mine goes to a big state u and has learned the tricks for getting into an oversubscribed class, like go to the prof ahead of time, attend the class in hopes of space opening, know when the drop/add dates are to jump on an empty slot, etc. Has your child talked to friends about what they do? Then go to the kid’s adviser. Is there a dean for the college?
Is there a general feeling that this happens all the time? Where do people complain about it? In the newspaper? Online somewhere like in a Facebook group? It is an issue at our big state u and people go to the parent group to complain and get ideas on what to do. The U admin is aware of the issue enough that changes are being made (maybe not enough, maybe not quickly enough). Where is the public forum for this school where you can make noise and get advice?
First, time to let go - let baby fight his own battles.
Second, since he is an upperclassman, it is probably his own fault - scheduling is usually done in reverse order of credits completed.
Third, most professors are willing to squeeze an extra body into a class - there are always drops. This is especially true for upper level classes that are required for graduation.
This has happened to all of my kids, more so to the youngest. It seems to have gotten worse in the past couple of years. He has navigated this by the above suggestions. For some of the classes, he has emailed the professors. Their response has been “show up to class on the first day and we will see what we can do.” He got into those. For a required class that only had one section and was scheduled for the same time as another required class, he met with his advisor and she approved a substitute. I agree that he needs to navigate this.
Although I understand why other posters want this parent to let the student handle this… I also understand a parett not wanting to spend for another semester (or year) of college. OP - Encourage your kid to enlist help from the advisor.
Listen, don’t fix. That is the message my daughter’s school gave us to begin her freshman year. It’s a good one.
My kids, only freshmen, have had no trouble getting the classes they want/need. Last December my daughter tried to register (on a Friday night, at 8 pm - do you think the school doesn’t want to deal with crying students so schedule registration for hours when the offices are closed?) but couldn’t because of a hold on her account (school’s fault, not hers). Finally got that cleared on Monday morning, but by then the class and lab she wanted was full. I told her not to worry, to sign up for the other session and tell her coach that she’d be missing practice twice a week because the school had put the hold on her registration. A miracle occurred and suddenly there was a space in the class that wouldn’t require her to miss practice. A miracle I tell you.
The other is in a rather small theater department, and the department puts holds on all the classes until everyone is registered from the department. At freshmen orientation I expected her to have a very broken schedule because all the classes showed ‘full’ and I expected her to have to take a bunch of core classes instead of theater ones. Nope, the red warning codes were removed and her schedule was the same as all those freshmen at the earlier orientation sessions, even those in honors with early registration.
As others said, there are ways around the computer. Talk to the teacher, talk to the department head, sign up for another section with the hope of switching, stalk the drop/add page. Have you looked at the course offering pages? One of my kids really can’t picture how the classes are arranged or overlapping (in a block format) and sometimes I can see a way for her to swap classes so that another section might work if she also switched around another class.
My opinion is that if it has anything to do with money I can get involved. If not getting the required courses will require an extra semester, I’d get involved after the student tried (really tried) to fix it.
Generally the more credits you have, the earlier your time slot is for registration.
What has she tried so far to get into the class?
Is it a very small major?
If the class will be given again in the spring semester then I’d just take it then. If the class won’t be offered again and not taking it next fall means your child will have to spend an extra semester or take a summer class then action is necessary. I’d have your child talk first to the professor teaching the class to see if he/she will sign them in even though the class is full (my D did this last year at her school and the prof agreed to let her in the class). If that doesn’t work I’d have your child talk to his adviser and perhaps the head of the department. If all three fail, then you might need to get involved.
No parent wants to get involved with things like this but the sad and frustrating (especially for the student) truth is that at some schools staff act differently when a parent calls as opposed to when a student tries to get something done. I have two kids and have only had to make one call to get a child into a required class . I agreed to make a call only after my S spoke to the professor, his adviser, and left multiple messages via office visits/emails/calls with the department head and the issue was still unresolved. Once I got called the adviser the problem was solved in 2 minutes – turns out that the adviser was miraculously able to sign him into the closed class. Problem solved.
My Professors have told me that they can override the number of spots available in a course if there’s enough physical space to accommodate it - for instance, if a classroom has 30 physical desks and the class itself is capped at 25, usually the professor will allow an extra person or two to enroll if they email them beforehand and attend the first few class sessions before add/drop.
I advise students, and I will do whatever I can to get my students into classes. For upperclassmen, it is highly unusual for classes to be closed unless…
Student is registering late.
Student is dead set on ONE section of a course only for whatever reason and can’t or won’t consider another
Student is out of sequence for some reason ( changed major, had to retake a failed course, etc.)
Your college wants your student to graduate on time. Send your student to his advisor to see what can be done or if he has to have the course this semester.
I can understand your frustration. You pay for private school and you don’t expect it to have public school issues. My D had to make some compromises freshman year… nothing major. Then again, she knew she was lowest priority and that the classes are capped at very small numbers (like 8 in most cases.) Coming from middle college (high school on a community college campus) she anticipated this and was prepared. In that scenario, there were always wait-lists involved and if she just kept going to class, eventually the instructors would add her. The university seemed easy in comparison (and she told me she got everything she wanted for fall semester of Sophomore year.)
I agree with others that your junior should be handling her schedule and issues with it. However, I also understand the desire to speak up about the issue on a more global, less individual level. If kids who are doing everything right at a private university aren’t able to get their classes… especially those for their major, then there is a problem.
I have allowed my daughter to take the lead in handling situations that arise at her school and, fortunately, she has never had an issue with registration.
But, I can honestly say that if I was in the Op’s situation, I would definitely get involved. The possibility of having to pay extra money because my child could not get a class needed for graduation warrants my involvement.
This type of thing (which seems less common in real life than the complaints that people have of it) is not necessarily limited to public or private schools. It likely means that the school did not adequately provision the instructional resources to accommodate student demand in the course or major.
The wealthiest schools may have the luxury of overprovisioning all departments so that there is always space for students to change major without restriction and get into whatever course they want (or need for their majors). But other schools may have limits on the number of students that they can accommodate, so they may have to limit entry into popular majors (by GPA or competitive admission) in order to ensure that students in the major can get into the needed courses. Remember that changing departmental instructional capacity is much slower than student demand can change, especially if the school prefers to limit class sizes.
If the situation described in the first post is not due to student pickiness (e.g. not wanting to take the 8am section) or error (e.g. registering late), then it may be that the school allowed too many students to enter the major for the department to have the capacity to handle them. A major that recently got a lot more popular than before may be likely to run into this problem.
This thread is over a year old. I am quite sure op has gotten resolution one way or the other. Closing thread