Drue Sokol, Photo Editor
On top of all the extracurricular activities, concerts, events and occasional parties happening on campus, students are still required to take classes.
Every student hopefully knows this, but creating the perfect schedule is far from an exact science. From required courses to that coveted elective, registration requires a unique mixture of seniority and knowledge of the online registration system, including the course descriptions/course schedule (CDCS) website.
Between Nov. 5 and 8, UR went through yet another registration process with both cheers and groans — sometimes simultaneously — from students.
Entry into some preferred classes and not others defined this process for the majority of students.
“The registration process for me was okay,” sophomore Alap Patel said. “[But] all the upper level classes were filled by older students quickly.”
For others, everything went according to plan.
“Registration went great,” sophomore Christina Smiros said. “Within five minutes, I had successfully signed up for all of my desired classes.”
Junior Phil Cohen has always had a positive experience.
“Registration went really smoothly for me this year and has in the past,” he said.
Freshman Abby Ritter, however, seemed less enthused.
“I do not like the registration process,” she said. “It is stressful and difficult to make all the classes you want fit in your schedule. I ended up getting the classes I wanted, but I had to take some of them at weird times.”
The seniors are first to register, followed by each subsequent class year. Both as a reward for their time on campus and out of necessity to finish the majors, minors and clusters, seniors secure the first spots in those elusive courses to finish their undergraduate education. Because of this, there appears to be a correlation between seniority and ease in registration.
For senior Kaitlyn Mokay, this scheduling phenomenon came to fruition as she registered for the final time.
“There were certainly times when I was an underclassmen where I did not get into the classes I wanted,” she explained. “At that point it was easy to work around it because there were still many classes that I had to take to fulfill my major and minors. Now that I am completing my last few classes, I was a little less flexible when registering, but it balanced out because I got to register first.”
Through a bit of researching on the CDCS website, students peruse potential classes before their actual registration time. Last year, a course scheduling extension for web browsers was designed by Harry Ledley ’12. This extension works with the University CDCS website to make scheduling, though not registering, much easier.
A simple click of the mouse adds a class to a projected schedule. If a conflict arises, a red alert replaces the “add course” option. Students have the ability to bookmark courses to keep track of them even if they cannot enroll in them that semester. Perhaps most importantly, there is a share option that allows students to post their schedules on Facebook in a clean, color-coded manner.
“As a senior, I found this registration experience to be the smoothest of my college career,” senior Jayson Baman said. “The [CDCS] program allowed me to choose classes and easily recognize time conflicts.”
When the time comes to register, students now need only to transfer their constructed schedules from CDCS to the official registrar program. While this may seem like a simple task, it has the potential to be frustrating.
According to sophomore Aditi Simlote, the department names are not always consistent between the two sites.
“The website isn’t perfect,” she said. “Finding the right department isn’t the most convenient, but ultimately it’s not a big deal.”
The registration system has both flaws and perks, favoring those who’ve been around a while and reiterating the old cliché: Good things come to those who wait.
Brady is a member of
the class of 2015.
