You know how I know that Princeton students are actually as dorky as our reputation suggests? The only thing that can rouse us from our sleep at 7 a.m. is, of all things, course registration. So, as I rubbed the ...(back to the article)
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It's not fair to do it at night, a time not only when all the arts groups meet (having SCORE at that time would severely disrupt many different practices, the same way sports practices would have problems in the afternoon) but at a time when people are often having meetings or working. The point of 7:00 is that no one will have another conflict besides sleep, which can be compromised one day of the year. Even as a freshman, I think the system's fair - upperclassmen deserve priority for their favorite classes.
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As you will soon learn, course registration gets better as you get older and waking up early matters less and less. By the time you are a junior or senior, you will probably be able to get into every single class you want. Let the freshman suffer. It builds character, and it makes it all the better when you are an upperclassman.
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The preference-ranking system is an excellent idea, Adam. The one problem is that it could lead to strategic ranking choices (i.e. specifically putting LIN 201 *first*, even though you prefer other courses, because the other courses aren't likely to fill up). The more widespread that becomes, the more likely significant distortion is. Nevertheless, I agree that it would be a great improvement from the system we have right now. And it would not be particularly difficult to implement.
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As an '03 alum, I was a member of one of the last graduating classes to fill out paper "course cards" for all four years. There was a bidding system for some classes, and an application system for others, but all in all, I always found the paper-based process remarkably smooth. Remarkably, I don't ever recall being shut out of a class I wanted to take, which is a very different experience than friends at other schools. I am finishing up graduate school at MIT, which also relies on a combination of an online pre-registration system and a paper-based system. I never hear complaints like these. This was a case of "fixing" something that wasn't broke, at least from a student perspective.
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Perhaps OIT could hook the registrar up with a server actually capable of handling all the requests? While their frugality is admirable, a 386 with 16 megs of the ram really can't take that kind of abuse...
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I personally don't mind getting up at 7 to register. I also compulsively press refresh every second from around 6:45 until SCORE opens--so I have no problem with that part of the system. The empty tabs are more annoying, and technological glitches bad. That said, SCORE is already light years ahead of what our parents had to do, which I'm told, was basically camp out all night outside of the registrar's office. Ranking courses would be an administrative nightmare, and using a lottery system is perhaps the WORST idea I have ever heard. I suppose one could make all courses application-only, though that would be even more difficult and wasteful. Or, alternately, students could be given a fixed number of "SCORE points" for their academic career, and then allowed to bid, E-Bay style on courses, budgeting out their "SCORE points" over the four years. But yeah. I actually don't mind SCORE at all.
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