My D is a junior at a state flagship. She is in honors and gets priority registration - they register before everyone except grad students. And my D was a senior by standing by second semester freshman year so gets the first registration slot among honors students. She always gets the best profs and times.
First semester of freshman year required a bit of work to get into the courses she needed (they were upper division courses), but it worked out. My D was in the last orientation group to register and most classes were full. A few emails to profs, and she received the overrides to register for the sections she wanted. The profs like having top students in their courses and often make exceptions for them.
I’m in a group with about 40-50 parents of college students in a variety of colleges - publics and privates (LACs and universities). Parents report every semester that their students at even the most elite schools have trouble getting the classes they want and often have to settle.
Edited to add that my D wanted to take a course that is offered irregularly and wasn’t being offered this semester. She simply talked to the prof and he added it just for her. One other student ended up joining her for the course. With only 2 students, the two agreed on when they wanted to have classes, and that’s what the prof scheduled. Class is held in his office 2x per week. Can’t beat that level of scheduling.
Mine haven’t had a problem. The only scheduling issue was during a summer semester. There were fewer upper level engineering courses and time conflicts with the ones offered that D needed. She’d already completed all her GEs and didn’t want to add an extra class that wasn’t required for graduation just to get to full time. She found a professor to do undergraduate research with for the credit hours she needed which ended up working out well for her.
Mt D19 is at a LAC, and the first years are all having difficulty finding enough courses for spring term in general. My D has already declared her major, but cannot take any of the courses, since first years have the lowest priority.
Evidently this is a very common case for first years’ spring term. The parents FB page has many complaints about the issues of registration for Spring Term courses for first-years in for at least the past three years, but I’m not finding the multiple complaints for sophomores and up. I hope that it is because it is a first-year problem only.
My D attends a medium sized private college and registration is similar to what was described above. There is an advance registration period during which students can select courses and rank them in order of priority. At the end of advance registration, an algorithm assigns students to courses. Students then have the opportunity to adjust schedules during the drop/add period immediately following course assignment.
Last semester, D was closed out of her preferred writing and freshman seminars but she had better luck for spring semester. She had no trouble getting into math and science courses as there are multiple sections available.
My kids are still in HS, but this would make me livid. Especially if I’m paying ~$80k/year. No way can that go beyond 8 semesters. I think we will add a question for our college tours about this topic.
High School hasn’t been much better. Not that we can’t get the “required” classes b/c the actual graduation requirements are pathetic. But getting the college-prep/AP classes that colleges want to see has been tougher.
It would be great if people commenting about who does and doesn’t have these issues named the schools in question.
I’m texting w/ my FY as I type. He’s having a meltdown b/c he’s been closed out yet again. This is only his 2nd time registering for classes, but all told he’s been closed out of 6 so far. It’s insane. He’s at a small Top 30 LAC as an undeclared Eng/CW major and he’s been closed out of required creative writing classes.
*edited to add… Eng/CW is the most popular major at this school. They’re renowned for turning out successful authors.
Of course, this is a situation that should not happen regularly. There is a problem with these schools. However, it was very much a factor in my daughter’s recent college search that the school she ultimately got into guarantees student placement in every class as long as the student follows (keeps up with) the standard schedule (TCNJ engineering). There needs to be more talk about this during campus visits and on these boards.
@techno13 - I’d go back to edit my response but time has run out. Purdue - no issues.
Seems from the limited responses here that smaller LACs are having more issues?
I also want to add that it was worse for us in HS too. D couldn’t take Spanish IV or AP bio because of scheduling conflicts.
Interesting how late in the semester some schools schedule. D scheduled for spring semester in mid October. I think they do it early so there is plenty of time to get problems addressed.
Wow, this is happening at LACs? Yikes. My oldest is a HS senior, so not there yet, but a development person at my alma mater, a highly ranked LAC, recently told me that they essentially never close courses; their class sizes are so small as it is, and if a course needs to be a bit bigger than normal, so be it. She said something to the effect of, “that might hurt us with USN&WR rankings [i.e. percentage of classes below 20 students or whatever], but we are not going to do that to our students.” Now, I do recall as a student that there were times when I felt the course OFFERINGS within my major were not always as numerous as I wanted them to be, but never was there a problem meeting major requirements or getting into any course I was interested in.
And, forcing students to wait until sophomore year to take FRESHMAN English/writing is just ridiculous. The whole point of that course is to take it first semester to develop a strong reading/critical thinking/writing foundation for the rest of college.
The OP named one of the schools, which is the school my kid attends, THE UMichigan. However, as a STEM (LSA) major and minor, “we” have experienced virtually no issues. There are just so many alternatives in terms of class choices and sections available.
Now, my kid did have to take a ONE 9:00 AM class this semester, but “boo hoo” to my kid. :lol:
OTOH, last semester, everyone’s favorite teacher “sold out” her 8:00 AM class and she had students sitting on the floor or getting there very early to get a seat.
I’m not above calling them out. He actually asked (on multiple occasions) if classes were hard to get. He was assured he would have no problem. This twice now he’s called home in tears b/c he’s had a list of 12+ classes he’s been at least nominally willing to take and hasn’t gotten into any of them.
I attended a Top 5 LAC back in the day and it was a problem even back then. I never had a problem getting required courses, but non-major courses, always filled before my registration and I had to find something else to take. I also found that courses were offered less frequently than I’ve observed at my D’s flagship (UGA). So Im really not surprised it’s still happening today.
Odd that a college cannot get a universal requirement like frosh English composition correct in terms of knowing the number of spaces it needs. Or does it give AP exemptions and overestimated the number of students exempt with AP credit?
Where students start undeclared with the possibility of any major, an unanticipated increase in interest in a subject could surprise that department.
Few colleges can afford to maintain ample reserve capacity in every department and the entire school (although unpopular subjects may have plenty of unused capacity). Reserve capacity means empty seats that could otherwise be filled with students paying at least some net tuition to help the college’s finances. But enrolling to capacity means that capacity limits (courses, majors, dorms, etc.) will sometimes be hit.
I edited my response to add that my kid is in LSA at UMich. @Knowsstuff has a junior in the CoE at UMich, maybe engineering and/or CS specific courses are closed out a lot.
My kids, at the same LAC, never had a problem getting courses they needed. They didn’t always get their first choice for electives, especially the first year, but they were always able to get into the course eventually. There’s no way we would have stood for a fifth year due to enrollment issues.
When you cap THE most popular classes in the entire course catalogue at 15… I’m not shocked. My S actually contacted the Prof during break & she never responded. He’s contacted her again, as well as his advisor but hasn’t heard anything back.
He’s trying to deal w/ this as best he can while also studying for a huge exam, writing an essay, and preparing for finals. His job also wouldn’t let him off for the day so he could register so he had to register as quick as he could then hustle to work… even though he’s never called off and has always been willing to pick up someone else’s hours if they needed to miss. He doesn’t need to work, but wanted to for the experience. It’s just been a really bad day for him.
I’ve heard it’s a problem at the UC’s and Cal Poly SLO. I’ve also heard it about LAC’s in terms of getting classes in Computer Science.
I tried to ask this at college tours, but it was hard to get answers… sharing info here is a good idea.
Perhaps that indicates that schools which ration entry to major or division can more easily plan enrollment capacity for those majors or divisions. I.e. if Purdue knows that it has N first year engineering students, it knows how much space it needs to offer in the courses that N first year engineering students will take.