The summer before starting college was one of my absolute favorites. Even now, I look back fondly on those golden months of traveling, seeing family and hanging out with friends.<\/p>\n
That being said, it wasn\u2019t entirely stress-free. I was also preparing for UC Berkeley, and I remember course selection and registration being a large part of that. While the mandatory Golden Bear Advising course on bCourses provided me with direction and feedback, I still had to conduct a lot of research and continue revising my course plan on my own. I spent hours on Berkeleytime, going down Reddit rabbit holes from 10 years ago and watching YouTube videos of students ranking the courses they\u2019d taken. I remember wishing that I had a more comprehensive guide to courses, specifically geared toward incoming freshmen. And so, I hope that this article can serve as a \u201cone-stop\u201d guide for our newest class of Golden Bears \u2014 or at least reduce extraneous research and stress.<\/p>\n
Adjust your expectations<\/p>\n
In high school, getting all the classes you wanted was probably not your top concern. But now, your courses are no longer guaranteed. While UC Berkeley offers thousands of classes, there\u2019s a lot of competition for the ones that everyone needs to take. Think breadth courses, reading and composition classes and even that one earthquake elective that\u2019s allegedly one of the easiest A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s not hopeless. There are plenty of ways to get a schedule that might not be perfect but that you\u2019re happy with \u2014 you just have to adjust your expectations first.<\/p>\n
Narrow your list<\/p>\n
Before you go all out trying to secure your classes, it\u2019s important that you\u2019re confident about what you even want to take. It\u2019s tempting to sign up for a class that everyone and their mother swears is life-changing, but if you\u2019re not even interested in the material and it doesn\u2019t meet any potential major requirements, then you\u2019re not using those units effectively.<\/p>\n
When narrowing my own list, Berkeleytime and Rate My Professors came in handy. I could see students\u2019 average grades and comments on professors \u2014 though I took those ratings with a grain of salt. This way, I knew that no matter what courses I ended up getting, I\u2019d enjoy taking them and could perform well.<\/p>\n
As a freshman, there are also unique opportunities for you to explore more niche interests.<\/p>\n
Freshman seminars are usually just one or two units, which can help you meet the minimum unit threshold. Some seminars offered this fall are Launching your professional journey: exploring careers with alumni, Philanthropy: A cross-cultural perspective and Greatest movies of all time. DeCals, or student-run classes, are also worth considering \u2014 you can learn about impact investing, baking or even Taylor Swift\u2019s artistry.<\/p>\n
Prioritize section enrollment over lecture<\/p>\n
As a freshman, many of your classes will likely have hundreds of seats, which means you\u2019ll usually need to enroll in a discussion section too. For instance, you might have a math lecture on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and a two-hour discussion section at a different time. The thing is, it\u2019s actually more important to get into a section than the lecture itself. You could be 30th on a lecture waitlist, but if you\u2019re second on the discussion section waitlist, you only need to wait for two people to drop. That gives you a much better chance of actually getting into the class. Sometimes you might have to look for sections at a less popular time. However, there are classes that will let you switch your section later \u2014 you just need to get into the class first.<\/p>\n
Being on the waitlist can be frustrating, but it usually moves a lot faster than you think! Additionally, there\u2019s an informal 10% waitlist rule: If a class has 300 seats, then the first 30 (or 10%) on the waitlist will likely get in.<\/p>\n
Backups aren\u2019t necessarily plan B<\/p>\n
For my first semester, I actually only had one backup plan, and I was prepared to use it \u2014 again, having a flexible mindset helped. Little did I know, it worked out a lot better than my original plan. I satisfied two of my breadths, took an intro course for my major and a quintessentially UC Berkeley class (shout out to Data 8).<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t be Cinderella<\/p>\n
In other words, be on time for enrollment, even if it\u2019s at the odd time of 2:40 p.m. Being late could lead to website crashes or precious spots being lost. If you\u2019re there right as the clock strikes, you\u2019ll have the best chance of getting your classes.<\/p>\n
That said, when you\u2019re adding classes to your shopping cart, fill out all the logistical information in advance, including how you want the class to be graded and whether you want to join the waitlist automatically if the class is full. This saves you time so that you can simply click \u201cEnroll\u201d the second your enrollment window opens.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, this gave you some perspective on course selection and registration! Again, there\u2019s no such thing as a perfect schedule, and you\u2019ll still have plenty of semesters to take all the classes you want. In the meantime, just do the best you can and enjoy your first semester!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The summer before starting college was one of my absolute favorites. Even now, I look back fondly on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[141659,159497,53778,159498,143,145,144,159499,26531,2278],"class_list":["post-396977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeleytime","tag-calcentral","tag-decal","tag-golden-bear-advising","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-rate-my-professors","tag-reddit","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}