It seems that the students, professors and registrar have all dropped the ball on class registration this semester. In the past three semesters that I have been at Amherst, all I had to do to ensure that I was in a class was to pre-register for it and show up on the first day. I pre-registered for my four classes at the appropriate time and was told that everything was in order. I assumed that I wouldn't have to shop for any classes. No particular person is to blame for the registration problems of this semester, but I do believe that things could be handled much differently.
Although students try to blame professors and administration, students themselves play a role in this disaster as well. We need to think seriously about our course choices during pre-registration, so that professors can adjust their classes in order to accommodate indicated interest. Additionally, students have to be conscientious during the shopping period. We can't just assume that a teacher has to let us into their class if we haven't pre-registered for it. Part of what makes Amherst a great place to learn is its small class size.
Mechanisms such as pre-registration and class limits are put in place to ensure this. In addition, the professor is put in a very difficult situation when a student asks to be put in a class at the very end of shopping period. Two weeks is a long time, especially for a class that meets three times a week. In a class like this there could already be quizzes or papers due, not to mention important lectures. This problem could be alleviated on both ends with a shorter shopping period in which students are actually allowed to shop without undue pressure on students or professors.
Unfortunately, pre-registration cannot protect a student from getting kicked out of a class. It puzzles me that the registrar allows 60 to 80 people to register for a class that is meant to be a seminar capped at 20. It is important to have full classes, but over-registering a class puts many students in a position of having to find another class and rework their entire schedule. Perhaps faulty lines of communication between professors and the registrar are to blame for this phenomenon. If so, it could be easily remedied. If a class is supposed to be capped at 20 then, during pre-registration, only that number of people should be allowed to register. If you don't get into that class during pre-registration, at least you know in advance and can take care of the problem at the beginning of shopping period. This makes registration both easier on students and professors.
Finally, although professors are understandably frustrated by being handed 60 students for a supposedly 20-person class, they need to be more up front with students about the possibility of actually getting into their class rather than stringing them along, leaving them without a fourth class at the last minute. (Yes, I admit I am bitter.) This puts the student in the terrible situation of having to beg to get into another professor's class and places the other professor in the equally awkward situation debating whether to turn the student away or not. (Thank God Professor Mehta showed mercy on my soul.)
When I went to my advisor on Thursday morning at 9:30 am, he told me that four hundred students had not yet registered. That meant that a quarter of our school was, just like me, pleading with professors to let them into their classes. This is unacceptable. On the last day before the shopping period is over, four hundred students should not be without a fourth class. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. The administration, faculty and students need to come up with some major changes in order to insure that neither the academic excellence of the College nor the sanity of its students is jeopardized by the failings of the monster that is our shopping period.