By Harley Ryan 

It’s that time of year again; where we have to make the hard decision of what classes we want to take for the upcoming semester. This week is the start of student registration for the spring semester. I wanted to give you a few quick tips that will hopefully help you pick your classes.

1. Know when you are eligible to register for classes. You don’t want to be that student who waits till the last minute to register, because you won’t get into the classes you want. Also if you wait too long you could miss the deadline for online registration and have to fill out a paper registration. Online registration dates are based on the number of credits a student currently has completed. Students who have the highest number of credits will be able to register first and students with the lowest amount of credits will register last. You can find the online registration dates on the left side of webadvisor’s homepage.

Here is the online registration schedule for spring 2016:

Nov. 2 -84.00 credits or more and graduate students
Nov. 5 –At least  54.00 completed credit hours
Nov. 10 –At least 24.00 completed credit hours
Nov. 13 -23.99 completed credit hours or less
Nov. 18 – All visiting and new undergraduate (paper form)

Nov. 24 –Online registration closes at 5 p.m. for spring 2016

2. Print out your degree program. All the school issued laptops have on their desktops a SU Academic Catalogs folder that has the graduate and undergraduate catalogs for the year you enrolled to SU. In those catalogs you will be able to find your degree program, which gives you a step-by-step schedule, of what classes you should take for all four years at SU.

3. Check out your student planning. The easiest way to get to the student planning website site is: https://wass.su.edu:8178/Student/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2fStudent%2fPlanning. If you happen to forget this URL you can also get there through webadvisor. You login into webadvisor then click on the current student icon. Once in your account you click on the student planning link where you will then have to enter your username and password again. Now that you are in student planning you want to select my progress tab that shows you how far along you are in your degree. You can see what classes you have completed and what classes you still need to take in order to graduate.

4. Plan and schedule. You can plan and schedule what classes you would like to take for the upcoming semester before it is time for you to registration. That way when it comes time for you to register all you have to do is submit your class schedule. There are a couple different options for how you can go about selecting your classes. One way is to go through the my progress tab where all you do is click on the classes you have not completed yet. It will bring up the class and what times it will be offered that semester. Or you can go to the course catalog tab where you find your major (they are in alphabetical order). It will bring up all the classes that are being offered that semester for that major and you choose what section. Also when selecting classes be cautious of what classes are only offered certain semesters and classes that have to go in a certain order. For example, you can’t wait till spring to take a class that only is offered in the fall or you can’t plan to take course 102 when you need to take course 101 first.

5. Send a review request. You must send a review request to your advisor through student planning unless they are working on your schedule with you. They have to approve your class schedule before you can register. So when you are on the plan and schedule page you go to the advising tab where there is a button called request review. This will notify your advisor that you want them to review the class schedule for approval.

6. See your advisor. If you are unsure about picking classes by yourself, meet with your advisor. That’s what they’re here for; to help you figure out what classes you need and best fit you.