Students across The University of Alabama campus are worrying again about what classes to take and how to schedule them perfectly. The reality is that picking classes can be an art or a science, and it all depends on the major for a class combination to be efficient.
Majors like English have wide ranges of classes that are available with guidelines of requirements, but majors such as engineering have classes laid out for their students to follow. Wendy McMillian, director of academic advising with the College of Arts and Sciences, explained how the college helps its students through class selection and registration.
“In Arts and Sciences, we’ve moved to a model where all first-year students must be advised through the main Arts and Sciences Student Services Center, and the professional advisors then help the students as they are exploring possible majors and talk to them about requirements and what their four-year plan may look like,” McMillian said. “Once that first year is up, hopefully that student is ready to transition to a faculty advisor in their major department; we remain the big picture people for them and continue to work with them on their degree as a whole.”
Sciences are generally more structured than majors like political science, which affects the way students pick and choose their classes, McMillian said.
“If there are majors like psychology – psychology requires [that] the two natural sciences come from a combination of biology, chemistry or physics, so that’s a science requirement for psychology majors. English majors are required to have four semesters or the equivalent of two years of a foreign language,” McMillian said. “Those are kinds of things that our advisors are talking to students about; if a student thinks they want to major in English and they find out they have to do a foreign language and it just makes them cringe and they don’t want to do it, then an English major is probably not the best fit for them.”
Though the core education classes provide a little bit of wiggle room for some, others aren’t so lucky. Nursing majors have little leeway for change within their class selections.
Katara Wilson, academic advisor and mentoring and recruitment coordinator for the RN Mobility Program, explained a nursing major’s selection room for classes.
“For our students, taking core classes is a very regimental schedule; our students are divided into two groups, lower and upper division, and the lower division students are those completing core classes in preparation to apply for the actual upper division, which is when they’re taking the nursing courses,” Wilson said. “For example, most have to have 12 hours of a history and social or behavioral science, so those are pretty much set up for them. They do have a choice in their history course, but they have to take Human Development 101 and Psychology 101, and they have to take chemistry for their eight hours of natural science.”
Online services also have some influence on class selection. Sites like ratemyprofessor.com, a go-to website for some students, list many different UA professors and their ratings. Other sites include koofers.com, which gives students access to past exams, class notes along with their professor ratings.
Hillary Bell, a junior majoring in communicative disorders, said she chooses classes and uses ratemyprofessor.com to help her.
“When I go to choose classes, I have already figured out which classes, including the section and teacher, that I’m going to sign up for, and that way I can go to ratemyprofessor.com and check which teacher would work best for me,” Bell said. “When I do this and the section that I need is full, it will often throw off my entire schedule. Now I’ve learned to have back up classes and different classes in case they are full. It can be very frustrating when classes are full, especially when that class is essential to have in order to graduate, and it always ends up working out after I register for classes.”
Because communicative disorders is not a large major, Bell has noticed there is usually only one section number for the classes she’s required to take for the major, but that hasn’t stopped her from figuring out her game plan.
“I now don’t get upset if I do not get a class. I know it may open up, or I could go talk to the professor to see if I could get in,” she said. “I don’t worry about which classes I need to take because of having such a great advisor and having Degreeworks. It’s a learning experience registering for classes, and the only way to get better with it is doing it is experience and doing it multiple times so that you know what to expect.”
