April 18, 2008

 

Message to students whose web registration for Semester I, 08-09 yielded only partial schedules:


This message is for students with between 0.0 and 3.0 credits after web registration.  You should read the message to all students announcing the posting of registration results and pointing everyone to information about drop/adds (http://www.stolaf.edu/offices/registrar/WebRegSpring/0.Epostreginfo.htm).  But I want to explain a bit what likely happened in your case, since I know it is disappointing to go through the registration process and come up short.

 

1.  Your posted results may not reflect the exact result of the web process in your case.  If a student ended up with very few credits, before we posted the results, we scanned your submissions to see if an early block in the process shut you out of open courses.  If so, we placed you into some courses from your submitted schedules. 

 

2.  How could a student have been blocked from a complete registration?
As you recall, the web registration runs in "passes," attempting to give each student (seniors first) one course before starting the second "pass," then the "third," and so forth.  At each pass, the computer must find an open course to put you in in order for it to know where to look on the subsequent pass for the next course.  If it does not find an open course, and if your schedules did not provide it with any viable alternatives, it simply stops, not knowing where to go next.

This could happen at any "pass." 

If it happens on the first "pass," a student will simply not get any courses, even if courses listed in subsequent passes are open.  This is why the registration instructions firmly instructed students to have multiple options at each pass, even (especially) the first.  For example, of the students who received 0.00 credits after the web run, all but one had only one option for the first course, and the other student had two.  In all cases, these were high-demand courses that, in many cases, filled even before all the seniors had run through the pass.  The tracking tool at the bottom of the schedules screen showed students the status of your schedules so that other choices could be added as back-ups.  But these students added no back-ups.

If this blocking happens at a pass after the first one, the student will have a partial schedule, but not a full one, even if courses in subsequent passes are still open.

 

I hope this helps you to understand what likely happened to your web submission. 

 

The message I'd like to leave with you is this:


1.  If the new registration process confuses you, please, by all means, make use of the helps we provide:

 

 

2.      We are also always available to answer your questions via e-mail, phone, or in person at our office.

 

3.      If you would like someone to look at your course choice submissions and help you analyze what caused the problem, please e-mail cisar@stolaf.edu or come to the Registrar’s Office during normal hours (M-F 8:30-3:30, closed during chapel).  We will be happy to do this.

 

4.      There are many, many open courses.  Even some of the ones you put on your schedules are very likely still open.  You will have a chance to add them during the drop/add process.  See: http://www.stolaf.edu/offices/registrar/WebRegSpring/0.Epostreginfo.htm  Remember, too, that any registration process goes better if you can build in some flexibility, and this is almost always possible in some way.  This was true for the ballroom, and it is true for the web process.  The worksheet is designed to help you to do this.  Fall semester doesn't start for more than four months.  Don't worry--these things do work out.

If you have questions that I have not answered here or in the link above, please e-mail me.

 

Mary Cisar ( cisar@stolaf.edu )