It was 8:30 AM on a chilly Wednesday morning when I woke up to the sound of my blaring alarm. I slowly rolled out of bed to grab my laptop: it was time for course registration. Without any glasses or contacts, blinded by my own sub-20/20 vision I logged onto Yale Course Search to try to chart my course(s) for the spring semester. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be finalizing the schedule I created on that fateful morning through a period of add/drop and a few weeks of waiting for instructor permission requests to be answered. This is the picture of course registration at Yale, a process that I had a lot of questions about my first year and knew nothing about until coming here. Since this is now my fourth time around the block with course registration, I thought I would shed some light on how this process works and give my best tips for perfecting the art of schedule-making in college.
A sample schedule of mine from CourseTable.
First, long before registration even begins, Yale students are often planning their schedules for upcoming semesters. The website CourseTable is super helpful in this, it’s a Yale student-created website that shows all of the courses offered here along with past student ratings of overall quality, professor, and workload. CourseTable also allows you to build and visualize your schedule which is super helpful when trying to see which courses overlap and what your daily schedule will look like during the semester. While Yalies frequent this website throughout the year, traffic really peaks right around the time of course registration when students are trying to make a game plan for course registration.
- My tip: spend some time making several versions of your schedule on CourseTable, this will help you effectively plan for any scenario that you end up in after course registration and will help you better plan your semester as a whole.
Yale Course Search, where it all begins.
Next comes course registration day which is actually a series of days during which each class year registers for classes starting with seniors and then going all the way down to freshmen. Just like I described earlier, every student has to wake up early in the morning to log onto Yale Course Search as soon as registration opens. Once you start adding classes, you’ll see classes fill up and become unavailable or classes require instructor permission which typically means you have to write a short paragraph to be considered. While this can be a little stressful as everyone is logging on at once trying to get the classes they want, I’ve also found it to be a fun process that always makes for good dinner conversation that night.
- My tip: go into course registration with a plan and make sure you register for the classes that will fill up first. If you have a class that you know a lot of people will want that is first-come-first-serve make sure to register for it first. Also, know which classes may ask for instructor permission and try to write up a short paragraph beforehand if you can. This will all help lower stress and will hopefully result in a better schedule in the long run.
Last, after course registration is complete and the semester begins, we have a period known as add/drop during which students can add or drop classes with no repercussions. This is a great time to try out a few classes and then drop the ones you’re not interested in before making a finalized schedule. I’ve definitely benefited from this system many times and it is definitely a nice cushion that takes some of the pressure off of making a perfect schedule right away.
- My tip: add more classes than you think you’ll take because it’s so much easier to drop a class at the end of add/drop than to add one. This is especially true if you’re really stuck between two classes, it can always help to go to both and then make a decision a little later rather than try to find a seat in a class once everything has filled up.
This whole system of planning and picking classes is certainly different than it was in high school and at times can feel hectic. However, I’ve actually found it to be a really fun part of my Yale experience. Yale has so many incredible classes that we get to shop through and trying to manufacture the most perfect schedule is a really fun puzzle that I love trying to solve. It’s also super helpful to know that even if I don’t get the exact schedule I want right away, I still have tons of time to finalize it and there’s always a cushion if I want to make changes.
