Registration can be a confusing process for many students, and the added uncertainty of continuing hybrid courses in the 2021 spring semester only increases students’ stress. Since everything is scattered across multiple different webpages, having to navigate UT’s separate systems to find information on courses and professors only makes this process more difficult.

UT needs to include clearer, more detailed information regarding class reservations and waitlists on the course schedule, as it will make the process of registration easier for both students and advisers.

UT Registration Plus, a Google Chrome extension created by computer science senior Sriram Hariharan, helps consolidate course information, such as past grading curves and syllabuses, into an easy-to-read pop-up. But Hariharan can only do so much with the information he is given. 

“If information like waitlist size isn’t publicly available, the extension would have to make a lot of server requests in order to come up with an estimate, and that could significantly impair the website’s functionality,” Hariharan said. 

As a result, students still have no way of accessing vital information on reserved courses and waitlist status, which could greatly inform their registration preparations.

Currently, the course schedule has a “status” column that states whether a class is open, reserved, closed or waitlisted. In the case of reserved classes, however, the course schedule fails to provide further information on which specific students are eligible for a class besides major restrictions and prerequisites.  

“There were a couple classes that I thought were reserved for me,” computer science sophomore Altanali Nagji said. “It wasn’t until I tried registering for them later that I realized I didn’t qualify. Having a little more transparency would’ve made everything a lot less stressful.”

Including a specific label under the status such as “reserved for July orientation session students” or “reserved for engineering honors students” would help clarify student eligibility. This would save students precious time during registration and eliminate any misconceptions about the availability of certain class sections. 

It would also be helpful if waitlisted classes displayed notices regarding class and waitlist size, such as “total capacity: 200; waitlist size: 38.” This way, students would know their potential place on a waitlist without having to add themselves to it first. 

Nagji, who transferred from Texas A&M University to UT this fall, said this waitlist registration feature is already available for A&M students. Students who attend A&M use a “worksheet” system to register for classes, which helps to significantly streamline the process.

“You can just add everything to a ‘worksheet’ that gets submitted at all once,” Nagji said. “You can view waitlist information for classes you haven’t signed up for, and if you don’t qualify for a reserved class, the system won’t even let you add it to your worksheet.”

While completely switching UT’s registration system from individual entry to something more like A&M’s simultaneous-entry worksheet system is not a change that can be implemented immediately, adding features to display reservation labels and waitlist size is definitely doable. 

“It’s definitely something we can look into,” said Brenda Schumann, UT’s deputy registrar and director of registration and records. “I don’t think either of these suggestions would be too difficult to implement, and I see the potential for students to benefit from these changes.”

Giving students more detailed course information up front would reduce the stress of registration, and it could also potentially help reduce the number of registration-related appointments made with advisers. The UT Office of the Registrar must add features that provide information on class reservations and waitlists to the course schedule as soon as possible. 

Chen is a finance and Plan II sophomore from Austin, Texas.