Joshua Baehring, Staff Photographer

After the elimination of Yale’s traditional shopping period and three rounds of course registration under the new policies, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun said that the present early registration system is here to stay — and that it will be extended to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

Although the changes to shopping period were five years in the making, they were accelerated to help the University meet the enrollment uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, and first took effect in course registration for the spring 2021 semester. While the previous course registration system allowed students to select courses in the weeks immediately preceding the start of the semester, students must now register for their courses during the prior academic term. Overall, the transition marks one of the largest — and likely most enduring — policy initiatives of Chun’s term as dean.  

“Because so much student and faculty effort has gone into developing early registration, it will stay, but I expect it to keep improving in response to feedback,” Chun said. 

The College’s model of early registration will also be piloted by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the fall 2022 semester, according to University Registrar Emily Shandley. She added that professional schools, including the School of the Environment, are considering implementing the new system as well.

The new early registration system is accompanied by several additional changes: first, the archaic Online Course Selection, or OCS, was scrapped in favor of a new online registration system known as Yale Course Search that gives students a higher degree of control over their course selection. Secondly, students have approximately five days at the start of each term — add/drop period — to finalize their schedules. Third, students no longer have to meet with their advisor to receive approval of their schedule.

According to Chun, the changes to the early registration period came in response to the “stress and frustration” that students and faculty had long reported surrounding course registration. By applying earlier for courses with limited registration, students learn in advance whether they have placed into them and can use these courses as an “anchor” around which to build their schedules, Chun said. For larger courses, Chun explained, earlier registration enables academic departments and programs to meet anticipated enrollment with sufficient teaching resources before the term begins.

Among the benefits of the updated system, Chun cited simplifying the process of applying for courses online, explaining that he and other deans had asked instructors to minimize course applications for students to relieve the burden of writing essays to apply for classes. Finally, Chun noted that while courses in high demand had previously been managed by individual departments, the new system coordinates the registration process across all departments and programs.  

Still, the transition to the new system has not been entirely smooth sailing. Students and faculty described a number of improvements that could be made to the system, though faculty generally favor early registration to the traditional shopping period. 

From “shopping period” to “add/drop”

Just as in the traditional shopping period, students may drop in on different classes before committing to a final schedule. In theory, students may “shop” as many courses as desired. In addition to the registration worksheet, students can add courses to the Canvas worksheet, which allows them to view course information and announcements without committing to a slot in the class or joining the waitlist. Under the new system, students can include as many as 5.5 credits on their registration worksheet and 5 on their Canvas worksheet.

However, shopping in its traditional sense is made much more difficult because the vast majority of class rolls are set the semester prior and are less fluid than before. Additionally, faculty are instructed to use their pre-registration course levels as approximate caps, meaning students are less likely to be accommodated when expressing late interest in a class. Dean of Strategic Initiatives Pamela Schirmeister wrote to the News that despite a “small amount of churn,” enrollments across the board were far more stable than in previous semesters. 

“The timeline of deadlines will require more discussion to settle on what works best for students and faculty,” Chun said. “Remember that faculty are not available to advise students over the breaks, so that is one constraint. But the start date and the duration of each semester’s early registration period are flexible; the question is whether it should be stretched out over time, which is what the students initially wanted, or whether we should adopt a tighter timeline.” 

Chun pointed to Princeton University, which conducts all early registration in one day for each class year, as an example of a course registration model that operates over a brief period of time. 

“Certainly better,” but “not yet good”: student and faculty perspectives

Students and faculty alike criticize aspects of the early registration and add/drop period, though not all found the new system worse than the traditional shopping period. 

One concern, especially from students, was the loss of the fluidity that shopping period provided. 

“Traditional shopping period created a chance for students to ease into classes and explore new interests without commitment,” said Leleda Beraki ’24, who serves as deputy academic policy director on the Yale College Council. “This was especially valuable to people who didn’t have a direct trajectory to match their interests and it even diversified the studies of people who did.”

The current system, Beraki argued, forces students to choose their courses far in advance, without a sufficient add/drop period to become familiar with the class dynamic. 

The brevity of the current add/drop period posed challenges for students this semester in particular, which began with two weeks of remote instruction due to concerns about COVID-19. 

“Trying to get everything figured out while still on Zoom was really frustrating,” Emma Polinsky ’25 said. “It’s difficult to judge if you want to stay in a class based on Zoom. You can’t even really gauge if you’re going to be able to manage walking from class to class [on time] in certain cases.” 

Patrick Hayes ’24 told the News that the process of requesting instructor permission for limited enrollment courses remains, in his experience, inconsistent. Although some of his professors based admissions on the permission request form on Yale Course Search, he never heard back after submitting requests for others and only confirmed his admission on the first day of the class. 

Although the system is designed to alleviate student anxiety surrounding course selection, Hayes told the News that he still experienced uncertainty in the process of confirming whether or not he had a spot in certain classes. This semester, uncertain about his place in a seminar, Hayes attended three additional classes that he said he would not have felt the need to attend if there was “a little bit more time or grace in the system.”

“Whether you’re pro-shopping period or not pro-shopping period, there are obviously lots of holes in the way that this works that aren’t great for students,” Hayes said.

Hayes emphasized the convenience of being able to pre-register for some of the small, limited enrollment history semesters he is taking this semester, but suggested that registration for larger classes should remain open for a longer period of time. 

Although Eleanor Schoenbrun ’25 also suggested that the course registration window be extended, she noted the benefit that the current system might hold for faculty. 

“I think that the members of the Yale community benefiting from the current pre-registration system are professors more than students,” Schoenbrun said. “The system in place solidifies which classes will be offered based on student interest, tells educators how many students to prepare for, and allows the university to adjust accordingly.”

English professor Leslie Brisman, who found the original shopping system “abhorrent,” said that he appreciated that both students and faculty had a better sense of their classes heading into the beginning of the semester. With the schedule change, faculty are also incentivized to structure and post their syllabi online at an earlier date, he said.

“The new system is certainly better — especially for responsible students who do their careful choosing with the materials posted well before the start of classes,” Brisman wrote in an email. “But the new system is not yet good.”

Brisman’s qualm with the new system, he wrote, is that it is not a “true” early pre-registration system, with some professors finalizing class rolls during the second week of the semester. Though the traffic in and out of classrooms during the early weeks of the semester has drastically decreased, volatility still arises sporadically.

Brisman also lamented that faculty advisors had been removed from the enrollment process. In previous years, students would meet with advisors near the beginning of each term to plan for the semester ahead. Though the new automated system alleviates the burden on advisers to make sure enrollment requirements are met, the bond between students and advisors can be effectively severed, Brisman suggested. 

“Now students do not need to consult us at all before more or less deciding on their programs, and even if they do, we are no longer asked to approve a program but to attest that we have spoken with the student about it,” Brisman. “Yale is still the Ivy League school with the most commitment to teaching, but the abolition of faculty advising is a blow to the values that commitment represents.”

French professor Ruth Koizim, a fan of the original shopping period, emphasized that the problems that departments face vary. The new system’s “one-size-fits-all” approach, she said, better suits the needs of large departments.

“The rest of us are left to figure out how to tweak the system,” Koizim said.

Shandley noted that faculty experiencing difficulties with new online tools can visit the registrar’s open office hours. 

Room for change

Hayes suggested that the University should find a balance between the opposing schedules of the past and present registration systems.

“I don’t think we should have to choose between ‘You have to get a schedule in before the end of the last semester and then we’ll give you like a little bit of time to change but not enough for it to be super meaningful’ and ‘You don’t get to pick anything until, like, the first day of class,’” Hayes said. 

The need to plan a future schedule while courses for the previous semester are still ongoing presented challenges for several students during the fall 2021 semester.

Beraki urged changes to the timing of the pre-registration schedule, arguing that students should not be expected to search and apply for courses while in the midst of another semester. Applications for limited-enrollment courses, Beraki said, might not be reflective of students’ best work if they are written under the pressure of a hectic semester. 

“For me, the end of the semester is absolute chaos and I am just trying to get through each day, so adding a new factor of figuring out the entirety of next semester is tough,” Beraki wrote. “This is especially true since many of the classes that need pre-registration require applications and essays. Dealing with the semester at hand is hard enough; we don’t need the registration system working against us too.”

“Students and faculty have reported appreciating these benefits, but I do recognize many students do not want to think about registration for the following term while they are busy with the current one,” Chun said. “Even so, this kind of advance planning is extremely valuable for designing a meaningful course of study, especially with guidance from advisers, deans and [deans of undergraduate studies].”

The add/drop period for the spring 2022 semester ended at 5 p.m. on Jan. 31.