Since 1969, Add/Drop has lasted for roughly two weeks of classes, giving students ample time to shop a variety of courses and weed out the less interesting classes from their schedule. This semester, however, the add/drop period lasted only a day and a week. First of all, this significantly decreased the amount of classes an individual could shop. Secondly, the change essentially forced students to register for classes they were allowed into, rather than their first choice classes. The latter complaint was a result mainly of a school-wide scramble for the more popular, and typically smaller, classes followed by a series of desperate emails to professors teaching courses that were lower down in a student’s preferences. This was only made worse by the fact that there are fewer courses offered than in previous years.
While some students ended up with the course schedule they desired, many more ended up just taking the first class they were allowed to register for that fit into their schedule, particularly because of the limited time they had to look for alternative classes if their first choices did not work out. While the staff of The Student realizes a longer add/drop also has disadvantages, we believe that the disadvantages of the shorter add/drop outweigh those of the longer period.
A longer add/drop period, while not ensuring that every student gets into the classes that he or she wants, will at least allow ample opportunity for students to find the best combination of classes for the semester.
Simply put, if a student’s first choice doesn’t work out, he or she will still have another week (rather than roughly two days) to find an adequate replacement. In turn, this would also create better classroom environments because students are typically more engaged in discussions or courses in which they are actually interested.
Another significant problem was the unfortunate schedule of the first week of class, during which students attended Monday classes on Tuesday, but a regular Wednesday classes the next day. This not only made completing the homework for these classes difficult, since all of the reading meant to be completed in two days had to be finished overnight, but it also meant that many classes meeting only on Tuesday would not meet until the day before the add/drop period ended. Since most of these courses were seminars, or other courses that typically have very limited space available, those taking a Tuesday-only course had to worry about not liking the class or being dropped from the roster if too many people showed up. Since add/drop was so short this year, this made the possibility of losing a class the day before the add/drop period ended especially problematic. Furthermore, the change meant that students were not able to attend Monday/Wednesday classes and Tuesday/Thursday classes on successive days, making it more difficult to decide on schedules early and reduce the stress of add/drop.
In short, this change was a failure.