The most dreadful time of the academic year

Class registration is a vital part to every college student’s experience. It shapes a student’s journey through college and paves the way to graduation. Every student has to participate in it, so why does it have to be so difficult at my school?

I should start off by saying that my school is on the small side compared to others. There are just over 14,800 students enrolled at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Class registration dates are assigned on a per student basis depending on how many credit hours have been completed. The higher the credit hours, the sooner students can register for next semester’s classes. Ideally, this means that seniors have the first pick, then juniors and so on.

All of the preparation to sign up for classes is pretty standard across the board for most universities. However, the registration process itself is where things get a little messy at my school.

Also, let me mention that academic advisers are pretty booked up for the month preceding registration day and for about a month after. There are just over 30 advisers at FGCU.

Thirty.

Per 14,800 students.

That would mean that every adviser would have to see 493 students each just to call it even.

It’s safe to say that if you weren’t one of the ones to make an appointment a couple months in advance, you’re pretty much on your own when it comes to building the perfect schedule.

The day before registration finally arrives and, it feels like the most nerve-racking day ever. Students double and triple-check that they wrote their classes down correctly and have everything in order to ensure there will be no bumps in the road the next day when registering, right? Wrong.

Registration opens at 6 a.m. on the dot, so most students set their alarms to 5:50 a.m. This way, they have 10 nerve-filled minutes to mentally prepare for the technological massacre that is about to happen on their computer screen.

By 5:59 a.m., each student is logged into the portal and ready to refresh the page.

This is the turning point of how each student’s registration experience is going to go.

In some cases, 6 a.m. hits, you refresh the page and you are forced to stare at the loading wheel of death for about two or three minutes (which feels like hours). Then, the page will finally load with a message saying, “the server is experiencing an overload of traffic” or “you have been logged out of Gulfline.” If either of these happen, you are forced to sign back in, which at that point, it’s much too late to get the classes you need.

If you are one of the lucky ones and happen to get through at 6 a.m., you have to scramble to type your class number in and press submit. Once again, you are usually faced with the loading wheel.

Once the page finally loads, nine times out of 10, at least one or two of the classes you need are already full.

At this point, there is not much that can be done. Unfortunately, I feel as though my school’s registration is based purely on luck and timing.

Because people cannot get the classes they need, they are graduating much later than expected. Only 21.5 percent of FGCU students are graduating on time.

Roy McTarnaghan, founding president of FGCU, has criticized the school for its six-year graduation rate and said that it is due to lack of available classes.

I personally know many people who have graduated anywhere from a semester to a year late because of lack of classes or people that could only take two classes and lost all of their financial aid.

The later students graduate, the more funding the school loses. The less funding the school has, the fewer classes there are to take.

It’s pretty much a huge snowball effect.

I decided to look into the biggest college in Florida to see what their process was like.

Not only is the University of Central Florida the biggest college in Florida, it is the biggest school in the nation as it’s home to over 64,000 students.

According to UCF’s website, UCF offers open advising to all students during registration time so that students feel comfortable with making their schedules.

Also, UCF offers a registration helpline that is available at all times for students to call and ask questions about the registration process.

I wanted a student’s perspective, so I talked to Anthony Casasnovas, a senior studying biomedical science at UCF.

“There is a specific time when registration opens, but there is no rush at all,” said Casasnovas. “I can go in and register for classes days after registration opens and still have no problem getting into any class I need.”

He continued to tell me that registration times were never at 6 a.m. They were always sometime in the afternoon or evening so that students did not have to wake up or have the possibility of sleeping through registration.

Not only that, but Casasnovas said that when they do go to register, they are able to enter the CRN for each of their courses prior to the registration period.

He said they keep them in a “cart” until they are ready to register, and then all of the classes are registered for at once.

Of course, I understand that UCF is a much bigger school that offers many more classes than FGCU, but why can’t we adopt some aspects of their registration process ideas?

We should offer online virtual advising appointments or open up a helpline like UCF does for students that have questions.

Maybe the issue go much deeper than advising issues and the school should start looking into improving advising and class availability.

Either way, we need to find a solution and we need to find it fast.