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<li>Course registration is on a first-come, first-serve basis for everyone. As a first-year, that means that all other Wellesley students have already registered, and that you will be in competition with the other first-years for the spots left. I think mostly this affects first-years with their selection of writing courses, since most first-years will be attempting to get into one first semester. Many classes that are currently full wouldn’t be available to you as a first year anyway (they require prerequisites that you wouldn’t have). If you go to this page: </li>
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<p>[Registrar’s</a> Office Home Page](<a href=“http://www.wellesley.edu/Registrar/Menupage7.html]Registrar’s”>http://www.wellesley.edu/Registrar/Menupage7.html)</p>
<p>on the right hand side under the column “Fall Schedule”, click “Fall 2009 Course Enrollments” to see a PDF that shows you how many spots are left in each course. That should give you a rough idea of whether or not you are likely to get into a course. </p>
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<li><p>It sort of depends. Some courses say you have to have instructor consent, but let you register anyway. You don’t register until towards the end of the orientation week (Thursday or Friday, as I recall), so I would say that you would have enough time to talk to/email profs. </p></li>
<li><p>The ALT means the class meets alternate Wednesdays in addition to every week on the other two days. The 1 or 2 after ALT indicates which Wednesdays it meets. So you could register for a class that meets MTh, W-ALT1 8:30-9:40 and TF, W-ALT2 8:30-9:40 (so you would have one class one Wednesday and the other the next), but not two classes that both met W-ALT1. A lot of times you can get away with taking an ALT Wednesday class and a class that has a Wednesday meeting at that same time every week, because some professors really only meet on Wednesday 2 or 3 times a semester even though it says Alt, but that is very class specific and I don’t think you can register for two classes that have any sort of time conflict. </p></li>
<li><p>Probably the course schedule is correct. Email the professor to be certain. </p></li>
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<p>5/6. You don’t need to have everything planned out your first year, but if you know you want to go abroad you need to be sure you get your language requirements rolling. Depending on your major situation, you may have to settle for going abroad for a semester instead of a whole year. I’m going abroad to Vienna this Spring and will be taking my classes in German; I can’t say I’m not nervous about it but the program coordinator (like Wellesley-in-Aix, Wellesley-in-Vienna is a Wellesley administrated study abroad program, which has some nice perks) assured me that you don’t have to be a super-German student to handle it. I did take 4 years of German in high school, but there were people there who had started German at Wellesley and he was still very supportive. I took courses in 6 different departments my first-year and only one in my primary major (Economics) and I am able to go abroad without any serious handsprings. This upcoming semester I will have finished a math minor (still haven’t decided if I want to major or minor in math!), taken 6 out 9 courses towards my Econ major, and finished all of the (numerous) required Econ courses. And I only have one distribution requirement left. So don’t go crazy stressing about studying abroad now!</p>
<p>Edit: Also, if you have questions about a specific course (like that course that says it will meet 3 times/wk, but only lists 2 meetings/wk), post the course number and I probably can access more info about it than you.</p>