First-Year Course Registration: Tips from Two Barnard Seniors
What courses should first-years sign up for? Are morning classes really as bad as people say? Should first-years only take introductory courses? How do waitlists work? Which professors are good?
Photography by Sophie Meritt/The Barnard Bulletin
By Sophie Meritt and Haley Scull
August 29, 2024
As course registration creeps up on all the first-years in NSOP, we (two Barnard seniors) have been thinking about our first time registering for classes three years ago. The excitement. The panic. The confusion. Here is our comprehensive guide to navigating your first course registration, filled with all the advice, tips, and resources we wish we had known.
General Advice
Planning and Timing
Be mindful about when classes are! Morning classes (specifically those infamous 8:40s) can feel a lot earlier than they did in high school—and this is coming from two former early-risers. Late-afternoon classes (4:10s and later) will end when it's pitch black outside during the winter.
Be strategic planning breaks and meals. Having an hour or two between classes can be nice for lunch or if you are a fan of afternoon naps, but any more can sometimes get boring or hard to schedule around.
Don’t overload yourself with classes. We’d recommend taking between 12 and 16 credits. You’re learning how to exist as an independent human for probably the first time. It’s super valuable to give yourself time for socialization, self-care, joining clubs, and exploring the city.
Foundations Requirements
Make your own spreadsheet to track requirements and credits. Advisors can be helpful (not all advisors are made equal though) but we have both found it is best to stay on top of everything yourself. Should you become acquainted with Degree Audit and go to advisor meetings? Sure. But definitely track your requirements yourself, too!
Try to get into a language class this semester, if possible. Language courses, especially elementary-level ones, often have lengthy and stubborn waitlists. Check if your language of choice requires a placement test (or if you are trying to test into a higher level). Between both campuses, there are so many languages you can take, so don’t be afraid to branch out from what you did in high school!
Choosing Courses
Should I register for a seminar?
Be wary of those seminars that have really interesting, cool names. Seminars (other than First-Year Seminars) are often pretty advanced material and are geared towards upper-class students who have already completed the more introductory courses. We know that seminars and higher-level courses have much more interesting names 90% of the time, but learn from our mistakes—take the introductory course first (we have a list of classes we recommend below).
Decoding the Course Code
Next to each course name there is a funky slew of numbers and letters that can tell you a lot about the course before you even read the description. Here is how you can decode it.
What do the letters mean?
The first four letters indicate which department the course is from, and the one or two letter initials determine which school the course is housed at:
BC: Barnard’s campus
UN: Columbia’s campus
GU: graduate course at Columbia
Other ones are for specific schools (E, J, etc.) but you generally will not be taking courses with these
What about the numbers?*
1000: Introductory course
2000: Generally a bit more advanced but often first-year friendly
3000-4999+: Advanced undergraduate course
Example: PSYC-UN3624 is an upper-level Psychology course at Columbia.
*This code is not always accurate, so if you are unsure if a class is first-year safe, check the department’s website! Many will have a section titled “Courses Recommended to First-Years.”
Courses We Recommend
Your dreaded slot to pick courses is twenty minutes away, now ten, now five, and you still don’t know what to take. Don’t panic! Here is a hand-picked list of tried and true classes for your first semester. Some are on here because they are interesting, some are on here because they fill tricky requirements, but all are first-year safe!
PSYC-BC1001: Introduction to Psychology (and the lab)
POLS-UN1201: Introduction to American Politics
SOCI-UN1000: The Social World
WMST-BC2140: Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory
PUBH-UN3200: Introduction to Public Health
ENGL-BC1068: True Crime
LING-UN3101: Intro to Linguistics
URBS-UN1515: Intro to Urban Studies
Resources to Use
CULPA: This is Columbia students’ very own unofficial course and professor review website. This is a must-check before registering, especially if you are choosing between sections of a course with different professors!
Approved Foundations courses list: This list provides an easy way to determine which classes will and will not fulfill Barnard’s Foundations and Modes of Thinking requirements. Though you can petition for courses to fulfill requirements, it is way easier to choose classes that are pre-approved to satisfy them. When looking through this list, make sure you are looking at courses for this semester and not previous ones!
SSOL: This is a Columbia resource that every Barnard student should have open on their screen during registration. The most important section when picking classes is entitled (you guessed it) “Registration.” Here, you can check how many people are in your (anticipated) classes, what position on the waitlist you are, professor instructions, and more.
Waitlists
What is the difference between an “automatic” waitlist and an “instructor-managed” waitlist?
Your position on an automatic waitlist is determined by the time at which you joined the waitlist. On SSOL, you will see your numbered position in relation to the other students on the waitlist. As students add and drop courses over the first few weeks of the semester, your position will automatically change, and, hopefully, your number will get lower and lower until you are admitted to the class.
An instructor-managed waitlist means that the professor of the course is in charge of determining the order in which students are let off the waitlist. If you are on an instructor-managed waitlist, you can still view how many people are on the waitlist (click “Info” under “Call # to find this number), but you do not have a position on the waitlist. Our advice is to send a brief, well-written email explaining your interest in the course as soon as you join the waitlist.
Tip: Don’t email the professor saying you want to be in their class because it fits in your schedule the best. For most professors with instructor-managed waitlists, they are looking for students who are genuinely interested in their course.
I can only waitlist three classes at a time. What should I do?
Don’t panic. Waitlist more frequently and quickly during ‘shopping period,’ the first two weeks of classes. Be strategic with which courses you waitlist and check SSOL before registration to see how big the waitlists are. You will have to find a good balance between waitlisting the courses you really want versus the courses that you have the best chance of getting into.
But remember…
Even as both of us are entering our fourth and final year at Barnard, course registration is always a bit crazy! You may not get the schedule you thought you wanted. Maybe you realize during the shopping period that the ‘super interesting’ class you got into has way too much reading. Perhaps you don’t know anyone in any of your classes (this is super likely). But at the end of the semester, you will probably have learned something cool or possibly even met someone you’ll be friends with for the rest of your life.
Our first-year, we (Sophie and Haley) met in a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality seminar that neither of us had any business being in. We were the only two first-years and had each only taken one introductory WGSS course before. (Haley actually ended up dropping the course at the end of the shopping period. Sophie toughed it out and perhaps regrets her decision.) Fast-forward to now and the two of us have been roommates for almost three years. We would have never met had it not been for a less-than-ideal class schedule.
The moral of the story is this: aim for your dream class schedule, but know it’ll be fine. You’ve got four years ahead of you.
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