Baala Shakya, Staff Photographer

On Monday night, the University Registrar announced the updating of Yale Course Search with fall 2025 and spring 2026 course listings. To the surprise of many students, the listings for undergraduate and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences courses are now headed by four-digit course numbers instead of three-digit numbers. This marks the first change to these figures in recent memory. 

“The University Registrar’s Office was approached by separate undergraduate departments who had or were near exhausting all three-digit course number combinations,” Shonna Marshall, the Yale University registrar, wrote to the News. “On average, there are 350-400 new Yale College courses offered every year, in addition to recurring courses.”

In response to the struggle these departments faced in naming new courses, the University Registrar’s Office decided to make the switch to four-digit course numbers. The office planned for the change to take effect beginning the Fall 2025 term.

Before the University-wide rollout took place, however, the office worked with the English department to pilot the use of the new numbering system come the beginning of this calendar year. Students taking the course previously called English 120, for example, are now officially enrolled in English 1020. 

“I feel like the number of the class has become the name of the class, so it’s very rare that someone will say, ‘I really want to take Reading and Writing the Modern Essay.’ Most of the time students will say, ‘I want to take 120,’” Kim Shirkhani, English 1020’s course director, said. “It feels almost like an identity change to call it something else, but I think no one’s really that serious about the complaint. It’s more just, ‘Oh, aren’t we silly’ … We have a sentimental attachment to 120.”

Last July, the University Registrar’s Office informed the Yale College Dean’s Office, directors of graduate and undergraduate studies, residential college deans and other office administrators about the upcoming change. 

Each departmental registrar was instructed to update course numbers ahead of fall 2025 term registration in April 2025. The office also provided the registrars with a recommended schema of renaming courses. The schema includes assigning first-year seminars with course numbers beginning with the digit “0”, introductory courses with the digit “1” and intermediate courses with the digit “2,” assigning the beginning digits of “5-9” to graduate courses. 

“This transition provide[s] an opportunity across all departments to better align their schemas for courses considered ‘introductory’ or ‘advanced,’” Marshall wrote. 

The undergraduate and graduate departmental registrars were also recommended to decide on a numbering schema in collaboration with their director(s) of undergraduate or graduate studies, respectively. The Registrar’s Office also provided each department with a list of active course inventory and a guide to assist registrars with the renumbering process. 

In the past, departmental administrators have encountered problems involving the use of the same course number for different courses.

“When I was the director of undergraduate studies for comparative literature, we did sometimes wind up having to reuse the numbers,” Pericles Lewis, dean of Yale College, said. “It just makes record keeping difficult. So now we have, you know, 10 times as many numbers.”

The University Registrar’s Office has provided students and faculty with a Course Number Equivalency Report, which includes the old three-digit and new four-digit figures for active courses. According to the office, all student systems have been updated to honor both sets of numbers.

“In the long run, most places have four digits. It’s pretty standard,” Lewis said. 

Yale College offers roughly 2,000 courses every year.