Hi! New here so I hope this is the right place for this question.
I was flipping through a pamphlet from Yale and noticed that they mention a “shopping period” at the beginning of every school year in which students can check out different classes before they commit to a schedule. This interested me and so I was curious about other colleges that might offer something similar.
Thanks in advance!
Most colleges have a period of time, usually the first two weeks, where students can drop without a W appearing on the transcript. There is a period of time, sometimes the two weeks but usually less, where a student can add a class without instructor permission, too. I am not familiar with Yale and how the “shopping period” compares to that but that’s the baseline at most universities.
*Some universities have the drop before W later into the semester but you usually cannot add after the first week or two.
Right. It appears that Yale is marketing an old idea under a new name.
But here’s the thing-- during that “shopping period” classes are being conducted as usual. So if you decide to add in a Calclulus class after a week of classes, you can expect to be pretty far behind in the material. They’re not treading water, waiting for the shopping period to end-- they’re teaching as though everyone who wants to be in that class is already there.
Yup, most schools have something like this. You have registered for class already, and then have flexibility to change your schedule during something like the first 2 weeks of class. If you realize you just don’t click with a professor, or something is not what you expected subject-wise, you can drop and add something else. The limits are, there has to be room in the class you want to add, and you have to scramble to catch up for what you missed. My kids have done that, but they usually decide after the first class meeting if they need to make a switch. In larger classes, you might go to the lecture without actually being registered, if you think you might be interested, to see what you think. At a smaller school/class, the professor with an 18 student cap may not take kindly to 10 extra kids showing up just to “see” if they might want to switch into it.
It’s slightly different from the traditional drop/add period that most colleges have. At Yale, there is no preregistration before the term begins (with minor exceptions), so students can “shop” many classes before officially registering. So many “shop” 8-10 classes before picking the 4-5 in which to enroll. For the OP, Harvard is similar.
But as others have noted, classes go on as usual. At Harvard some large gen ed lectures may use the first class as an introduction instead of a standard lecture, but that’s not the case for all. So if one is shopping 8 courses, one has to keep up with the work until deciding which ones not to pursue.
An advantage of shopping period over add/drop is that kids who take the summer to decide what classes to take aren’t disadvantaged. Also, a couple classes I took raised the enrollment cap and moved to bigger spaces as shopping period went on (Salovey’s Psychology and the Law notably started in a space that held about 200 people; final enrollment was about 1,500). Also also, for discussion classes where just making it bigger wasn’t feasible, it was unusual for anyone who desperately wanted to be in the class to be shut out.
That said, Yale’s extended drop period, which allows a drop with no transcript indication as late as midterm, is IMHO more useful. Two weeks isn’t always long enough to know if you’ve signed up for a heavier courseload than you can handle.
Thank you everyone for the info! Glad to know that most colleges at least have some leniency with class selection, if not the same kind of preview program.
Many colleges don’t offer as much flexibility as they appear to on paper. Certainly most of not all colleges have an add-drop period, but that doesn’t tell you how difficult it may be to add classes that you didn’t secure during pre-registration. Letting students “audition” classes is risky for colleges that may prefer to lock students into classes with less-desirable instructors.
When my daughter started at Rice, students there were allowed to overload in preregistration, which at least allowed them to start out with one extra class and then decide which one to drop. This privilege was rescinded during my daughter’s time there; and while my daughter’s class was grandfathered under the old policy, those affected were understandably NOT happy. Sure, you can change classes during the add period IF you can get the class you want to switch to, but that’s difficult with many popular classes at many if not most schools. You can show up to a full class and make your case to be added; the receptivity to this strategy varies by school as well as by individual instructor. Yale’s system is quite different in that everyone just shows up, attends as many classes as they want, and “sorts” themselves into the ones they want to take. I don’t fully understand how they make it work as compared to the far more coercive and scarcity-driven systems at the vast majority of colleges.
The “how hard is it to get the classes you want” question is an important one to ask when comparing colleges. At some high-competition-for-resources schools, this is a major issue that impacts not only the quality of education but the ability to graduate on time. This is one reason why Regents status at the UC’s is such a big deal - Regents Scholars get priority registration, ahead of athletes, who are in turn ahead of the “general population.” Prospective students at many schools often underestimate the value of priority registration conferred by honors colleges/programs. It’s extremely frustrating to spend such large sums of money on an education only to end up struggling to get the classes you want and need. It doesn’t need to be as flexible a system as Yale’s, but you do need to be able to actually access what you’re paying for.
I’m certainly not advocating that the Yale/Harvard system is perfect; it’s not. Without preregistration, it’s incumbent upon the department/instructor to project enrollment by course (and thus, resources needed), which is usually OK for courses that have been offered before. However, at least for Harvard, they have a tendency, particularly in humanities/social sciences, to offer courses once, and they are never seen again. Every semester there are stories of courses that enrollment far exceeded projections, which leads to scrambling for classroom space, finding more TA’s etc.
I would also suggest that what a college has to do to make registration more efficient and/or more flexible is different when a school has 1600 students per class vs. 6000.
Haverford and Bryn Mawr have shopping periods, very flexible like Yale’s. Certain classes do have pre-registration where lotteries are run (based on historical interest and the fact that class sizes are limited and smaller) but the majority are eligible for shopping.
Seems like this old misconception refuses to die.
Yes, there is scarcity in some popular courses and majors, since UCs do not have Harvard-level endowments that allows them to maintain unused capacity in all departments (which would be seen as “wasted” in an environment where people complain about why their kids cannot get into a UC that is not “beneath” them like UCR or UCM). But course registration systems are designed to give priority in courses to students who most need them for their majors (and “impacted majors” are that way to avoid exceeding the department’s capacity to teach them), and give all students the opportunity to choose part of their schedules before letting any fill out the rest of their schedules (so that all students can get their most important courses first before they get filled by others choosing out-of-major electives).
Obviously, scarcity is not ideal. It also means that popular out-of-major electives are hard to get, and students trying to avoid 8am or friday class times may not be able to. But if a college manages it reasonably, that should not prevent students from graduating on time.
Of course, avoiding such scarcity may be an actual benefit to attending a super-wealthy well-endowed school with excess capacity everywhere, so that there is space in every course that one may take (but check to see that this is actually true on the school’s class schedule).
Yes, it’s true that within the CA public system, it’s not really the UC’s where the scarcity issue impacts time to graduation - that happens more in the CSU’s, where the four year graduation rate at campuses like San Jose State is in the single digits even though a majority of students do graduate by the six year mark. (And of course I realize that course availability isn’t the only factor in this - economic pressures contribute too, with high rates of food insecurity throughout the CSU system.)
Sorry, @ucbalumnus , I made a poor segue from a general statement about course scarcity, and how it can impact both quality-of-life and sometimes time-to-graduation, and the Regents example of registration priority and its significance. It appeared as if I were asserting that one needed priority registration to graduate on time in the UC system, and you’re correct that this isn’t true. (I don’t know if there’s a corresponding example of a way to get priority registration at CSU…?)
That said, if I were weighing a decision as to whether to attend a UC vs. a “super-wealthy well-endowed school with excess capacity everywhere”… Regents status would tilt the decision far more heavily toward the UC than otherwise. Similarly, if I were deciding between UC’s… for me, the one where I had registration priority would win over a possibly more “prestigious” campus where I did not. That’s just me, but I think - and this was the point I was really trying to make - that many high school seniors (having never experienced the frustration of finding all of their first and second choice classes already full) mistakenly assume that a Regents offer is mainly about a couple thousand dollars of scholarship money, when in fact registration priority is a huge enhancer of the UC experience. Not shade… you’ll get the classes you really need either way, but it’s awfully nice to get the classes you want.
Just by way of personal example… I know that Quora posts are just subjective data points and not gospel, but this description of the design program at UC Davis (which IMHO paints a very clear picture of the positives as well as the difficulties) gave us a lot to think about when my d was considering that program. https://www.quora.com/UC-Davis-Design-program
A few CSUs had four year pledge programs (two year pledge for transfers). These are now expanding to more CSU campuses and majors under the name “California Promise” (which is not limited to scholarship or honors students, but can exclude those needing remedial courses).
The conditions include be taking full course loads and following your major’s course plan, not needing remedial courses, etc… (Doing these things means high probability of on time graduation anyway.)
But four year graduation rates are still low, probably because of other reasons like students not being able to take full course loads because they need to work lots of hours, or are not that strong students to being with.
It is not that unusual for high school students or their parents to post complaints about being on the wrong side of how things in limited supply at the high school are rationed (space in classes, teacher recommendations, etc.).
UVA also has this. I’m not sure I’d call what most colleges do the same as the shopping period Yale has. D (grad school) hates it there - doesn’t love waiting til the last minute to register especially for classes she has to request to get in (grad school, so some seminars). Often at Yale she has run up on not being able to get to a meeting of a class before deadline because lots of grad classes only meet once a week. A pain not knowing your fall schedule over the summer.
Whatever system your school has, be sure you understand drop/add dates and dates to change to pass/fail and when you can do this. A friend’s child at small LAC realized after a bad semester with language that he could have done it pass/fail (didn’t think he could with a requirement). Needed another semester but courses were considered together and couldn’t do the second on pass/fail if didn’t so it for first semester. Language not his thing - tanked his GPA.
Notre Dame is another school which allows late drops without showing a “W” or other designation on the transcript - basically, middle of the semester, we’ve heard from kids we know who attend. So apparently a lot of students overload on credits, then see how they are doing through mid-terms, then drop the course which is their lowest grade. On the one hand, I like the idea of the flexibility to get more of a sense of your schedule, beyond just the more typical two week window. On the other hand, mid-semester drop seems a bit more flexible than necessary to give students time to gauge their interest etc.
Amherst College has a “shopping period” that is similar to Yale’s.