6 Things You Should Do Before Registering for Classes

Huskies, we all know the brutality of registration all too well. From given 2nd priority registration as freshmen to realizing you have no more time to put off the classes you don’t want to take till your senior year, and coming to conclude that you have to take those classes. Here are some tips and tricks to making registration easier and less stressful.

1. Plan before your assigned registration date: This is a must, especially if you don’t have a clue what classes you have to take in the following quarter. Planning your schedule preliminarily on MyPlan will not only make you less stressed the day of registration, but it will also save you time so you don’t end up taking to much to time to find classes that could already be full at that point. So instead of waking up an hour before your registration period starts (6 a.m. usually :/) you can wake up about 5-10 minutes before to login to your netid and click register all at once for all the classes you added to your plan! And… Voila, you’re done :).

1. If you are a Pre-major, use Pre-major worksheets: Pre-major worksheets are a great tool that can help you figure out what classes you should take in the future in order to be able to apply to get into your major. They are an amazing resource that you can print out, or download onto your desktop computer to look at whenever you need to register.

1. Mark off all the classes you have taken already: This is help you get a sense of what classes you have taken already, and what classes are left for you to take in the future. It is really helpful to have this information saved somewhere after every quarter to see what you still need to take and what you have completed.

1. Try to balance: Make sure that the rigor of the classes you take aren’t going to be too difficult, try to take an easier class with two rigorous classes if you can. Or if the class is extremely difficult, and you are able to take two easy classes with it that will fulfill other core requirements or general graduation requirements do this! It will make your quarter less stressful to have a full schedule of very rigorous classes, and most likely you will do better in the rigorous classes if you’re taking them with easier classes.

1. Try not to take all your easier classes at once: Similarly to tip above, it is really important to take classes that you know will be easier for you with some harder classes. A lot of people may think it is a very good idea to start out their freshman year taking easier classes to start off your college grades with all A’s and 4.0’s… this will most likely not be the case for too long if you take all your easier/general requirements all at once in the same quarter or in the beginning of your college career. Not only will it slow done the process of you getting into your major if you don’t have a lot of credits from transfer or A.P. credits from highschool, but it will make it harder to get good grades when you are later on left with only taking your required difficult classes that are crucial for your major! Try to balance out your quarter with both easy, and hard classes that will get you closer to graduation.

1. CHECK RATE MY PROFESSOR: Okay, we all know this one is not always 100% accurate, but it really does help. It can be super helpful to be able to read the experiences of other students in a specific class, to know how hard or easy the class is in general, and the experience of the professor with their students. Sometimes the score a specific professor may be higher or lower on rate my professor than in your own experience in that professor’s class. So not all the time will you agree with those statements if you take a class thinking, it all depends/changes when you actually experience it for yourself. However, a lot of students do trust the opinions of other students and it really does help you decide what classes you want to take now versus later (depending on what teacher is offered that quarter). On a similar note, you can always also ask your friends what classes/professors are great for you specifically based on classes they have taken :)!

Registration does not always have to be difficult, time consuming, and frustrating. But it most often definitely is. Try to see if any of these tips can help next time you register for Summer, Autumn, Winter or Spring quarter! If you already do all of these, that is awesome and you probably do a lot of planning already for registration! Have an awesome registration period UWB! :)

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