UL Lafayette students report trouble with registering for required classes next semester

University of Louisiana at Lafayette students have been experiencing difficulty with registering for spring semester classes. 

The spring semester is coming up, and with that, registering for new classes has been going on. Between advising and planning for the intended classes that students need to take, it can be stressful when registering for classes due to many classes getting full quickly. 

Registering for classes is on a first come, first served basis, but even when having a scheduled time to register for classes, many students can miss the chance to get the intended classes they need or have picked for the following semester. 

There have been many classes filling up quickly, such as foreign language and English classes for freshmen. 

This freshman class is the second-largest class that the university has had since 2005. Due to the large freshman class, many of the English classes for freshmen have been filled, leaving many freshmen to be waitlisted and without an English class.

Sarah Guzman, a freshman majoring in nursing said that she was unable to get into an English class, despite registering as soon as her scheduled time allowed her to. 

“Out of all the classes I have, I couldn’t get into a single English class,” Guzman said. “I tried to move my classes around, but when I went to move some other ones around to put an English class on my schedule, there was none left.”

The department head of English, Dr. Mark A. Honegger, said that the large freshman class this fall has been a challenge for staff and because of English classes being filled so quickly, that they are working on adding more English 101 and 102 sections for freshman. 

“Sections and seats are being added to the schedule for English 101 and 102, so students should regularly check the schedule to see when they become available,” Honegger said. 

Though many students are having difficulty getting the classes they need, despite registering as soon as their time slot allows, Honegger mentioned to regularly check schedules of classes regularly to see if other sections and seats become available. 

“Scheduling is a dynamic process that is constantly changing as students both add and drop classes,” Honegger said. 

The high demand for modern language classes has left many students without a foreign language on their schedule for next semester or leaving them waitlisted. 

Madison Deroche, a freshman majoring in criminal justice, says that she was unable to get into a foreign language class, despite looking at three different language classes to try to get into one. 

“I’m currently waitlisted for both Spanish and American Sign Language. I was supposed to take German next semester but whenever I went look up German classes, it said none for the spring,” Deroche said. “But my advisor didn’t tell me there weren’t going to be any German classes for the spring. So I can’t get into any modern language class for the next semester.”

As stated before, registering for classes are on a first come, first served basis but even for freshmen entering UL Lafayette, classes fill up fast and they aren’t always able to get into the intended classes for their major the first semester arriving. 

“I couldn’t get into my criminal justice class, Criminal Justice 101, which is my major. So I’m taking a lot of political science classes and people get confused when I tell them my schedule because I’m not a poli-science major,” Deroche said. “By the time that I was registering for classes, basically all of them were full, even the waitlist, so I couldn’t even get on the waitlist.”

Deshayla George, a sophomore majoring in nursing said that issues she has faced with registering for classes have been mostly from classes being full and gone by the time she is able to register. 

“Some issues I faced registering for classes were that they were already mostly full and gone. If you didn’t get classes before they took them all, they were all gone,” George said. 

Many classes, especially ones intended for students’ majors tend to fill up quickly. Each student has a scheduled time to register for classes and sometimes that doesn’t always allow for students to get the specific classes they need. 

Due to many students constantly changing their schedules and reviewing classes picked, some of the classes students need tend to become available. Each student should constantly check their registration dashboard for any available spots in classes that they are waitlisted for, especially if it is a class they need.