What schools offer a "shopping period" for classes?

aquapt
Mon, 09 Jul 2018 16:52:14 +0000

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