Registrar Pre-Registration

Week One - Advising PERIOD

Students meet with their advisors and agree upon a schedule of courses. Advisors must give students permission to register via approval of their saved schedule in Workday.

WEEK Two - FIRST ROUND of Pre-Registration

Students are responsible for registering for their advisor-approved courses for the upcoming semester. Seats are not guaranteed during the first round of pre-registration. All students who pre-register for a limited-enrollment course have the course appear on their registration record. During this period, prerequisites and instructor permissions are enforced.

Week Three - Roster Management PERIOD

Faculty with over-enrolled courses may cut their rosters to the approved cap. While reducing the class roster is not mandatory, students remaining on the roster at the end of the second registration period are guaranteed a seat in the course unless they fail to meet a prerequisite or do not attend the first session of the course. Faculty members may wish to exceed the cap with the expectation that some enrollments may be lost during the add/drop period. Those who take this approach must be prepared to have enrollments that may exceed the cap (see below). Courses with multiple sections may also ask the Registrar's office to balance the students in order to achieve more equal numbers and/or to bring overenrolled sections under their limit. Enrollment in a course is guaranteed after this point but not enrollment in a particular section of multi-sectioned courses, discussions, or labs.

Week four - Second Round of Pre-Registration

Students are able to register for new courses during this second round of pre-registration on a first-come-first-served basis. Enrollment caps are enforced. Faculty with courses that have reached their cap may convert the course to instructor permission if they wish. Again, students who are enrolled in a course at the end of the second round of pre-registration are guaranteed a seat in the course unless they fail to meet a prerequisite or do not attend the first session of the course. Additional movement may be needed in multi-sectioned courses in order to balance sections and equitably distribute students.

A Note on Reserving Seats for First-Year and Other New Students: Two Approaches

There are two methods of reserving seats for new students who enter in the fall: instructor permission (which requires the faculty member to monitor requests from students), or the use of course caps to reserve a number of seats, approved by the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP), between preregistration and the add-drop period. These two approaches are described in more detail below.

Faculty members with capped courses who wish to hold seats beyond the second round of pre-registration (e.g., for first-year students) may do so by converting their course to instructor permission. The CEP (Committee on Educational Policy) must approve this designation before the first day of advising week.

Alternatively, faculty members teaching fall courses with an enrollment cap may elect to designate a lower cap during the spring pre-registration period. The higher cap will automatically go into effect for fall orientation and add-drop, allowing first-years and other new students to register for available seats. Faculty wishing to use this method of saving seats for new students may do so using the CEP course proposal and editing tool.