Engineering junior Ankit Somani is addicted to Penn InTouch.
"Whenever I pass by a computer, I go on" the site, he said. He has been waiting for the lucky click of the mouse that will register him for Finance 207.
Somani is just one of the many students racing to see which classes open up during the University's official add/drop period, which began Nov. 28 and continues through Jan. 20.
The Office of the University Registrar's spring 2006 course timetable publication recommends the following guidelines for registering for courses during the add/drop period: watch out for time conflicts, don't exceed the maximum credit load and make sure to register for all corresponding units of a course.
But because seats in classes are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis, students who don't make the cut have other means for landing a spot.
Take College freshman Judith Kim, for instance. When Penn InTouch indicated that the English course she was trying to enroll in was closed, the setback didn't stop her from sitting in on Professor Jennifer Snead's English 290 class.
"I would try to find other alternatives before I stalk the professor," said Kim, who had e-mailed the instructor ahead of time.
However, Wharton professor Christopher Geczy said he does not give preference to unregistered students who show up the first day of class.
"I don't give favors," he said.
But Geczy, who teaches two Finance courses for the spring semester, recommended that students make an effort to sit in on potential classes.
"There are opportunity costs in doing that," he said. But he added that, in the long run, assessing a class' difficulty can prevent work overload.
Wharton Finance Department Academic Coordinator Andrea Rollins said her department uses an online waitlist for students who cannot get into oversubscribed finance classes.
The department gives priority to Wharton seniors and underclassmen who are concentrating in finance. Students outside of Wharton are granted permission to enroll in a Finance course if space is available.
The waitlist allows the department to see which classes are in demand, unlike Penn InTouch, which provides no way of monitoring which courses are being requested, she said.
"Some decide on another class or forget to take their name off the list, so it looks like there is more demand than there really is," Rollins said.
