help with picking out R&C course

rider730
Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:31:56 +0000

aeboi - some classes are straightforward. If you are qualified and there are still open seats, you can register. Others have restricted registration into several pools each with their own maximums. Usually this is done to establish a fairer shot for attendance.

So, for example, a class may have four categories:

Open - anyone can register into this category if a space is open

Majors only - you can register in this category if you are officially in that major, whicih usually happens about two years into your time at Cal. If not in the major, the open spaces are not available for your registration

New entrants - these slots give a chance for entering freshmen or transfers to get into a class, all others can’t use these slots

Instructor approval - these slots each require their own custom code for registration, which would be provided by the instructor to a student. Rather than registering with the course entry code (CEC) that everyone can see, you put in your unique CEC to take the slot offered to you

Now, when you go onto telebears, you don’t actually apply to a category. If you enter the general class CEC, telebears sees if you fit into the restricted categories, such as “majors only”, and if they have openings you are registered with that categories space decremented to reflect your attendance. If you have an instructor provided CEC, use that and your registration will decrement the ‘instructor approval’ count. If you don’t fit any of the categories except ‘open’, but there is still space left, you are registered and the ‘open’ count is decremented. If there is not space in the category(s) to which you are qualified, you can waitlist as long as the waitlist size has not reached maximum for the category yet.

This is why you will see some classes listing openings but also having a waitlist. Another hypothetical, a class with room for 150 students and currently 103 are enrolled and 25 are on the waitlist with a max of 25. This happened because the 25 on the waitlist did not qualify for one of the categories that still has open slots.

The situation in the paragraph above also occurs when there is room in the main lecture, like our case of 103 enrolled of 150, but the required discussion sessions are all full. Since you can’t get into a discussion session and have to waitlist it, you are also waitlisted for the main lecture.