Hello, and the warmest of welcomes to all incoming Hopkins students. My name is Joseph Rainbolt, and I am a junior here at Hopkins from Jacksonville, Fla. I am a pre-med Public Health Studies major with a Spanish for the Professions minor. Congratulations on your acceptance to Hopkins! On behalf of the student body, we're thrilled to have you.
As a Hopkins student who has gone through five course registrations, I know this can be a complicated process to navigate, but you’ll get the hang of it. Here are my very best tips for a smooth, painless course registration that leads to a great semester.
Do Your Research
This is the most important tip I could give and supersedes everything else I will talk about in this article. Have a well-researched plan going into registration. It only takes an hour to plan, and I promise it will make for a less hectic registration day and a better semester. The following is a spelled-out list of what you need to know:
Know Yourself
It’s easy to get overly ambitious on registration day, but you should sign up for courses that align with your personal habits and needs. If you are not a morning person, do not sign up for 9 a.m. classes. If you are someone who crashes and naps every day, don’t take classes in the late afternoon.
Make sure you think strategically about when you want to eat and whether you would prefer your classes to be clumped together or have breaks in between. Also, be conscious of lab classes. Labs are usually three- to four-hour classes that are draining. Most of the time, you will be standing and actively coordinating with a lab partner on an experiment. Be smart about where a lab fits in your schedule. I would recommend against Friday afternoon labs, if you can avoid them, because midterm weeks can be draining and having to focus for such a long period at the end of the week can be difficult.
Student Information System (SIS) Strategy
The SIS registration website can be confusing. As you add classes, they will be in order of importance and you can rearrange them based on the classes you want most. You should, without a doubt, put classes that you need for your major or career track at the top of your registration ranking. But also be aware of how many seats are available in the classes you are registering for and how many people will be trying to get into those classes. For example, if a class has hundreds of seats open, it does not need to be as high on your registration ranking. However, if a class is a common major or pre-med requirement it’s possible that lots of people are going to be trying to get into that class so you should move it higher on your registration ranking. The website Semester.ly can be great tool for strategizing all of this as it allows you to estimate your likelihood of getting waitlisted in any class.
It is also critically important that you are ready to submit your SIS registration exactly at 7 a.m. Registration occurs via an algorithm and if you are late, others will get into classes ahead of you.
A final note on SIS strategy is that you should have backups in your SIS cart. Since classes are added in order of preference, adding second and third choices to the bottom of your cart is a smart backup plan.
After Registration
As an underclassman, you likely won’t get your ideal schedule right away. You may find yourself in a section of a class you don’t love or be forced to add a second or third choice class to your schedule. However, this is not the end of registration. People are always moving between classes, so monitor and stay on the waitlist for sections and classes you want. If it is imperative, for your major or otherwise, that you be in a specific class or a specific time block, do not be afraid to reach out to professors. You can send a polite email explaining your situation and asking to be let into a class. That doesn’t necessarily mean you will get in, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Registration won’t always go exactly as planned, but with preparation and flexibility, it will work out and you will have a great set of classes for your first semester. Best of luck with your upcoming registration!
Joseph Rainbolt is a junior majoring in Public Health Studies from Jacksonville, Fla. He is a Sports Editor for The News-Letter.