Despite the University Registrar's efforts to make the registration process a fair one, many students still find themselves closed out of classes at the beginning of every semester.
Part of this problem may lie in the way that the registrar keeps track of the number of denied requests for any given class -- or, in some cases, does not. Overbooked classrooms and students' early registration mistakes are also responsible for this frustration.
"Basically, all the classes for my major I've tried to take, I haven't had any problems getting into," College junior Byron Kho said. "However, stuff like writing classes that are smaller ... I've always had trouble getting into those."
But for other students, being closed out has not been limited to small classes.
College sophomore Peter Christodoulou said that he was unable to get into the section of Economics 002 taught by a professor he had heard good things about.
The open section he was forced to join fit less easily into his schedule, Christodoulou said.
Although these and similar problems are not uncommon, registrar officials have devised a system of tracking requests during early registration.
According to University Registrar Ron Sanders, after students have logged on to Penn InTouch and made their early registration requests, the registrar runs a program that evaluates how many students were accepted and closed out of each class.
The registrar then proceeds to give that information to the University's various schools and departments so that administrators and department heads have the option to cancel unpopular classes or open additional sections for crowded ones.
But the counting of requests ends there. When regular registration -- also known as add/drop period -- begins, the registrar does not keep track of how many students are closed out of the classes that they try to add.
Sanders said that this problem is "certainly something that can be brought to the attention of the schools and departments," adding that "it certainly could add to the data that they could evaluate."
Yet Deputy Provost Peter Conn said that additional monitoring during add/drop would not necessarily clarify which classes are especially in demand.
"It is quite difficult to determine just how widespread the problem is. ... Demand data, for instance, are not reliable indicators of actual student preferences."
Another issue that the University must face when it comes to scheduling classes is finding sufficient space to hold them in.
"I don't think we can say that the size of the rooms we have available is a problem," Sanders said. "The problem is that they can't all be taught at the same time."
Political Science professor Rogers Smith experienced this firsthand when he tried to find a larger room for his well-liked 11 a.m. "Civil Rights/Civil Liberties" class.
"The time I'm teaching the course is a very popular time for teaching," he said. "The University doesn't have that many lecture rooms in that range that that course would naturally be, which is the low 100s. So they put me in a room that holds a maximum of 85 or 90."
When Smith requested a larger room, he was told that there were not any available. This meant that approximately 20 students were shut out of the class.
"It is a problem because courses have a tendency to grow over the years if they are offered repeatedly and students have a good response to them, but this growth process is cut off if you're regularly assigned to a room that requires you to cap the course," he said.
"I think that ideally for courses that don't need to be kept smaller for pedagogical reasons, we should be able to allow every student who wants to take that course to take it without being prevented from doing so by lack of facilities," Smith said.
One solution to this problem, according to Sanders, is for classes to be offered in more varied time slots, since right now most rooms are "booked solid" from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
"Students need to be able to spread out their course selections over a long period of time," he said, referring in particular to Friday and early-morning classes. "The departments need to offer the courses over a much wider expanse of time than they're doing now, and we're encouraging the departments to do just that."
According to Sanders, not only would such scheduling help the space issue, it would also be beneficial for students.
"If you're trying to shoehorn all your courses into a very restricted time block, it's highly unlikely that you're going to be able to do that," he said.
Engineering freshman Christine Chen agreed with Sanders' idea for more varied time slots, adding that "it's a good thing because it means more options. It definitely would help. A lot of times, time conflicts come from when there aren't enough openings."
But not all students would be happy with such an arrangement.
"I don't think that'd be very popular," College freshman Ravi Chugh said. "I know I wouldn't go for it. I guess it might help with people getting closed out of classes, but then they'll start complaining that classes are too early."
A second solution, Sanders added, is for students to register properly during early registration.
Advanced registration is "certainly not first come, first served," he said, adding that it is a complex process in which "every course has to have what we call a registration control put on it that determines the order in which the data will be looked at."
Professors can decide that they prefer to rank students by seniority, major or both. According to Sanders, there are up to 16 different control codes in the system that professors can choose from.
Sanders said that the problem some students have with early registration "may be because they're not in tune with what they need to do to make themselves a better candidate to get into the course."
He added that students should always select the "any section option," and choose alternate courses when registering. Also, students should be sure to rank their preferences carefully, since the registrar system also takes into account the order in which the student requested their classes.
But according to Chen, despite the fairness of this process, it can still be a complicated one.
"It's really confusing how you have to work out all the time schedules yourself," she said, adding that when she registered early for a chemistry class -- but forgot to select a lab time -- she was dropped from the course.
Student mistakes aside, Conn said that both the registrar and the schools themselves are striving for improvement.
"Our departments make every effort, on an ongoing basis, to respond and adjust their offering to areas of highest student interest and need," Conn said.
