My son will be a freshman at Holy Cross this fall. We are beginning to regret our decision already, unfortunately. It is extremely hard to successfully register for entry level courses for popular majors. HC offers an “academic counseling” session to freshmen in June to help with the registration process. My son asked about gaining entry to science courses and was told it would be no problem (of course, he was paired with an English prof for some reason for this session ). It turns out it is extremely difficult to register for science courses. He wasn’t assigned a biology class during pre-registration despite listing it as his top choice. Now, all biology sections are full for the open enrollment period. This is a huge disappointment. We feel Iike we were misled by school during our info gathering phase and during our visits and now my son can’t study the area of greatest interest to him. We have paid our fall tuition so we are stuck for now . Our friends at other LACs are not having this problem. I don’t think HC has figured out how to have enough sections of classes to support the profiles of students they are admitting. Something to consider; we wish someone had warned us.
Hopefully he can add during the first week.
There may be some information that can help you in this thread. It’s about another school but similar strategies should work:
My D attended a LAC and was closed out of the intro class in her major first semester freshman year. She ended up knocking out quite a few requirements that semester and, while not ideal, it all worked out well enough. Take a deep breath and move forward. Scheduling gets easier as a student gains more seniority. In the meantime keep checking for openings, get on a waitlist if possible, stay in touch with the academic advisor, etc.
Yes, read the linked thread, which should give you some confidence that it will work out fine. A freshman not being able to get a class they want in their first semester is frankly pretty small potatoes in the bigger picture. If he is on the ball during the add drop period, he will probably get mostly what he wants. Maybe not always at the time he wants it though, at least for the first year or so.
Edit: FWIW, my D attended a small LAC and occasionally didn’t get her first choices. This is a nearly universal problem to some degree at most colleges, even the most rejective ones. She ended up really enjoying almost all of her classes, even when she had to settle for the 8 am or 8 pm class. Make sure your son isn’t disregarding those less popular times.
Veteran Holy Cross parent here (graduate and current student). My current student prioritized two classes for course selection her first semester. They got one and the other class was prioritized for the spring semester. It all worked out. And as a matter of fact, the spring course was in her major which she ended up declaring by the end of the semester. (When you declare your major, the advisor is in the discipline you choose and course selection seems to work smoother).
Best of luck to your student. It’s a hectic and stressful time, but the advising at HC does work well, especially if your student is proactive in communicating with the class dean if things really get sticky. Also, seats tend to open up sporadically when semester starts and that may the case with your kid. Biology is a very popular course and people drop and pick up in the beginning.The first year course selection stress is true at just about every college and university. Nothing out of the ordinary here.