At least get an A in scheduling

The words "course registration" may conjure several images depending on your major, your year and your ability to cope in situations with the potential to be less enjoyable then walking to Olin Hall for a 9 a.m. class or finding out your new roommate is a country music fan.

For those looking to get into essentially large lecture courses, i.e., your basic pre-med or IR requirements, registering for the following semester's courses can be a simple process. There is plenty of room for you. You don't need to wake up with the roosters and with students taking physics. You visit the Registrar's homepage and a couple of clicks later ... bam, a full schedule.

Students in majors boasting smaller courses, Writing Seminars for example, have it a bit harder. Unfortunately, you may find that by the time you are ready to commit yourself to the next round of academic agony, the torture methods you've painstakingly selected are no longer available.

And underclassmen, on the bottom end of the registration hierarchy, may find that regardless of the size of the classes they are seeking to take, by the last day of registration -- when everyone else has already assembled a schedule -- the courses they want are full.

Whining aside, the Registrar's online system does have a lot going for it. Any upperclassman can fill you in with his or her own stories of frustration, but I think we'll all agree that sitting at your computer to sign up for courses beats an older system where students submitted handwritten forms to the Registrar's office and had to wait a few weeks while office staff entered course work by hand to learn what courses they had received.

Now you might be thinking, "I just got here, I still miss my mom, why do you insist on bringing up next semester's classes?"

Well, basically it's important know about registration now if you end up loathing anything you're signed up for first semester and because second semester will be here faster that you can say "bye-bye satisfactory/unsatisfactory."

You should be familiar with the registration process because you used it to sign up for courses this summer. Remember how that worked because you'll be using the same system to register for spring semester courses in November and next fall's courses in April.

If you're interested, registration information for Intersession (the period in January when you can come back to campus for essentially free courses, to do research or to escape from your family) will be available in October or November.

Prior to registration dates, the Registrar will send out course catalogues and post course offerings online. You may then plan and organize your upcoming schedule.

In addition to speaking to friends about courses they've taken, running ideas by your advisor and reading the News-Letter, you also have the Academic Course Evaluation (ACE) Guide at your fingertips for feedback on particular courses. Available online at http://www.jhu.edu/~registr/aceguide, the guide presents student responses to surveys on course components like workload, interest, professor and presentation.

There are bound to be courses you'd like to take that are offered at the same time or at another inconvenient time, like the morning, but Hopkins has enough variety that you should be able to fit your major requirements in with some elective courses that really excite you.

You'll register for courses depending on your year. At 7 a.m. on your specified day, you will be allowed to log into your JHED account and can then sign up for courses. You'll be notified if classes are full right away, so you should have some form of a backup plan.

You may be placed on a waiting list for courses you can't get into, and often during the first week of class, professors will either take sympathy on students on the waiting list and just admit them or encourage them to hang around through the Add/Drop period to see if spots open up.

Add/Drop, a period when you may add and drop courses from your schedule, begins on the first day of a semester and ends several weeks into the term. (Note that Monday September 6th is a holiday and Add/Drop will take a hiatus). And while upperclassman get priority for initial registration, there is no such delineation after the semester starts. Associate Registrar Betsy Paul phrases it nicely when she says, "the early bird gets the worm."

During Add/Drop students may access the online system to change their schedule, but later there are more restrictions and changes must be made in person. Make sure to know these specific dates to avoid "W's" (for withdrawal) on your transcript and when adding a course that is full, and remember to get the professor's permission before heading to the Registrar's Office.

Online registration is never available for some courses, like those at other Hopkins divisions (Peabody for example), those that you are taking satisfactory/unsatisfactory, those that require a professor's permission and independent studies or research projects. If you are in doubt, head to the Registrar's Office with questions.

Another thing to keep in mind is the limitation that "Holds" on your University account will cause in terms of changing your schedule. Your registration account may be stalled if you have not paid tuition, dealt with health insurance requirements or spoken with your appropriate academic or department advisor.

Check before registration or Add/Drop begins to make sure you are cleared to avoid catastrophic hindrances to getting your ideal schedule.

This entire process sounds complicated and bureaucratic, but that's because it is. It's pretty rare for students to get the perfect schedule on the first try, so don't stress out if you need to drop a class for which you've already bought the books.

You're not alone and you will get it right ... and yeah, maybe after a bit of stressing. Overall though, it's worth the effort, and sometimes the wait, to get the set of courses that you want and certainly the course load that you can handle.