When you are initially building your schedule, you might find it helpful to start by adding in all possible sections of your mandatory classes, and do the same for any elective classes you absolutely want to take.
While this may look a little scary at first, you will have a visual representation of classes that may cause timing conflicts in your schedule - which makes planning your classes a bit easier.
If you are going into your first year, classes that you will (likely) need to add are:
You can visit this SCS page to view suggested course sequences for first-year students, if you’re curious about when students typically take the courses mentioned above.
An important thing to consider when planning your schedule is class timing, as it can impact your class attendance, or how successful you are in the course.
Are you a morning person? If yes, maybe you want to consider taking early morning classes to free up the rest of your day.
Are you a night owl who wakes up late? If this is the case, maybe willingly adding an 8:30 am class into your scheduling is a bad idea.
Do you have obligations during the evening, or just like hanging out at night? If so, you might want to consider taking classes earlier in the day, or taking “unscheduled” courses that are flexible as to when classwork needs to be completed.
If you’re a commuter student - you might want to consider trying to limit your in-person classes to certain days, in order to save you some travel time.
When adding classes, you may be tempted to add all of your classes consecutively to consolidate your classes to two or three days of your schedule.
While you might think you’ll be okay - consider planning a gap in your schedule in order to have time to eat your lunch. It likely won’t be possible to align it to a certain time frame, but having time to refuel in order to be able to focus in class is critical!
Outside of class timing, there are a couple of other factors that you should take into consideration when planning your classes.
Here are some guiding questions:
If you are not one of the lucky few to have an early registration time ticket, the initial schedule that you made may not work out, as some classes may fill up before your time ticket. In order to prevent this being an issue for you - you can do a couple of things to prepare.
First off, before your time ticket, you can create multiple different versions of your schedule with different sections of the same classes. However, this isn’t fail-proof, and one of the classes that you were interested in taking might be entirely full. Since there is always a probability of this happening, be prepared to revise your schedule right before your timeslot, in order to not have to rush to adjust courses when it opens.
If there is a course that you have your heart set on, but it fills up before you’re able to register - you might be able to join a waitlist for the course. Oftentimes, a couple of students will drop any given course, meaning that there is a chance that you’d be able to register in it closer to/during the term.
While you may be tempted to solely base your professor choices on their RateMyProf ratings - it is best to take them with a grain of salt. However, if most of the reviews are positive - then the rating is more likely to be credible, as negative reviews are sometimes written in reaction to getting a bad grade in the class (which can be a result of lack of engagement in the course on the student’s part).
If you are seeking to get insight on which professor you might want to choose, you can ask upper year students for advice!
You can also check out past course outlines to see how specific instructors have strucutured their course in the past.
NOTE: Course outlines can change each year. Use past outlines as a reference only, and don’t rely on them as a guarantee of what the course will be like this year.
Even if your schedule doesn’t turn out perfectly - whether due to factors beyond your control or decisions you later wish you’d made differently - it’s not the end of the world. Take note of what didn’t work and use that insight to improve your planning the next time course registration comes around.
If you ever want to make changes to your courses down the line, you are able to drop and add courses until the respective deadlines, which you can find in the Academic Calendar.
(1) BCS first year course selection guide
(2) Time Tickets
(3) Waitlists
