Everything You Need to Know (Right Now) About Class Registration

The most important thing we can tell you about class registration and course schedules is that there is absolutely nothing you can do now to determine your schedule for the fall semester. The second thing you need to know is that there will be an extensive information session covering everything you could ever want to know about course registration during BTFO. Despite the fact that this information is coming, we have been receiving quite a few questions about registration and class schedules, so we figured it would be beneficial to walk you through some of the peculiarities of choosing and scheduling classes here at YDS.

Class Registration
Class registration opens at 9:00am on Tuesday, August 28th. Before you attempt to add any classes to your schedule, you will want to check your student account for any holds—the most common are health center holds (lacking an immunization, etc.) and financial aid holds (payment required, forms missing, etc.). If you have any holds on your account, you will not be able to proceed with class registration.

The standard course load for a full-time student is four courses. While you can take five, it is not recommended for a number of reasons, and you cannot your first semester. You can add as many courses as you like before schedules are finalized, but the system will not warn you if you try to add classes with conflicting schedules. They will alert you if a course has a pre-requisite that you have not fulfilled, or if you are on the wait-list rather than the class-list. You can also add courses as an auditor, which has a different status than a course in which you are enrolled. It is recommended that you do not attempt to finalize your schedule and submit it to your adviser and the registrar's office until you have gone through the shopping period. (Your adviser and the registrar must okay your schedule before it will be approved.) While you can switch your schedule around easily before submission, once you submit your chosen schedule it becomes much more difficult to make any alterations to your selections.

Shopping Period
The first two weeks of every semester are affectionately known as shopping period. During this time, students are welcome (and encouraged) to attend as many classes as they like in order to determine those courses that most interest them and the schedule that works best for them. Before you finalize your course schedule, you can add as many courses as you like, even if they meet at conflicting times. As you attend classes, go over syllabi, and speak with professors and other students, you will pare down your choices to those four or so that will make up your fall course schedule. One of the best pieces of advice we can give you is to take advantage of these two weeks: talk to professors, check out the book list, scope out the discussion section schedules, look at the exam schedules, and be honest with yourself about what courses you really want and need to take, especially in your first semester. If Esther had taken advantage of her first shopping period, and Patrick his second, they both would have had a very different semesters.

Because it is likely that you will be shopping more courses than you wind up taking (most shop 6-7 classes, but there was a Yale Divinity Drama skit last year about one of its students who must have had a timeturner with how many classes he shops), it is fairly common for people to shop classes that meet at conflicting times. If you would like to shop two courses that meet at the same time, and you don't have a timeturner, you should email both professors and tell them your situation. In some instances, they will simply suggest you attend half of each class, while other professors may allow you to miss the first session entirely while you attend the conflicting course, under the assumption that you will be in their class the following week. They have all been through this many times before, and while many professors find the practice of shopping to be irritating as it can make it difficult for them to sort out their classes, they recognize the value of it for the students. If you add a course after the first class meeting, it is good practice to email the professor ahead of time and let them know that you will be joining their class for the next session. Don't be afraid to approach a professor if you would like to take a course, even if there is a conflict with the schedule.

Do not think that just because you are not committed to a course for the first couple of weeks that the professors will not treat each course session as a full class—there will be reading and assignments, and in general they will treat each of you as though you will be sitting there all semester. However, when a course is over-enrolled, a professor may also use shopping period to trim their class list, and unfortunately, as first year students you may find that you are unable to get into a course that interests you. Luckily, you have shopped more than enough classes and so you have other options open to you (right? right.). And if you haven't, well, you still have time to add something new.

Course Offerings
If you attempted to sort out your schedule today, you would be shocked upon arrival at YDS because there would be so many choices that you missed. This is not only because Lisa Huck loves surprises, it's because professors are often sorting out their semester schedules over the summer and are often adding more courses right up until the first day of classes. In some cases, courses are removed from an original list because of a professor's conflict, a substitution for something else, or lack of student interest. This doesn't mean that you can't look ahead and get excited! You can check out the course offerings online anytime, as long as you do so with a firm grip on the reality that you cannot register for classes yet and that anything you see on this listing can change.

If you are going to look ahead and find classes that may interest you, explore other schools and departments as well—do not feel limited to the courses offered at Yale Divinity School. Many students take classes in the graduate school in Religious Studies, History, English, Classics, or Political Science. Students take courses at the Forestry School, Yale School of Drama, the Law School, and the School of Management all the time. This online course listing is the best place to see what is available across all of the graduate and professional schools in one place. For more up to date listings of possible courses at other schools over the summer, you may try looking at their individual department pages. Since it is still the summer, some of these schools or individual departments may not have their listings up quite yet, but since you're only looking to get a feel for what might be available (right? right.) and not because you're sorting out your finalized schedule in your head (right? right.) you won't be alarmed or betrayed by any later changes, additions, or disappearances (right? right.).

When you arrive at YDS in August you may notice that one wall of the common room is covered in sheets of paper broken down by the five divisions of courses here. Welcome to "The Wall"—the most up to date and detailed listing of courses being offered at YDS found anywhere. (Yes, we still use sheets of paper on the Wall as the official course listing.) Here you will see some courses that you have not yet seen on the online database, and many of them have fuller descriptions, as well as specific schedules and contact information for the professor(s). They are also divided by area, and often marked as to what pre-requisites they have or requirements they fulfill.

Requirements
Many students feel pressured to think ahead about their schedule because they want to ensure that they are able to easily fulfill all of their requirements and still have room to take some interesting courses in other areas. Great! Fulfilling requirements is wonderful, and everyone should do it or they won't graduate. It is important to keep in mind that while the requirements are there for a reason, they are more fluid than many students realize.

Requirements are only necessarily if you do in fact want
to eventually graduate.

Just because you need to take two classes in Old Testament doesn't necessarily mean you need to take Old Testament Interpretation I & II—maybe you could take a Psalms seminar and a class on Hebrew Bible Ethics, if those seem more your style. Maybe there is a class downtown that looks interesting and could also fulfill a specific requirement. Check to see if classes are cross-listed as fulfilling more than one area requirement—you might be able to fulfill requirements in more ways than you think.

Many bible seminars require that students have taken Old Testament/New Testament survey courses. This does not always mean that you need to have taken those courses at YDS, and if you were a religious studies major in college, or have taken courses elsewhere that would serve the same purpose, you should talk to the professor and ask if those previous experiences are satisfactory. The same goes for many history and theology seminars. The purpose of pre-requisites is to ensure that everyone has a strong enough background in the material to be able to keep up with the work, not to make sure that everyone has taken all the same classes in their first year at YDS.

If a course is only offered once every 2-3 years and it is a required upper level course for a particular degree or certificate, most professors will allow students to enroll despite not having fulfilled listed requirements if that student will not have another opportunity to take the course in a later year. They may assign additional reading, or sit you down for a long chat about how the first half the semester is going to be charging full-speed uphill and you should really consider pairing up with an older student for guidance, but they will not exclude you and thereby make it impossible for you to complete your degree or certificate. Sometimes, they will let you take the course even if it is not required for you, but you will have to offer them a strong and specific reason why you feel you should be able to enroll.

Advisers
If our number one piece of advice regarding courses is to utilize shopping period, the second one would be to utilize your adviser. Each student is assigned a faculty adviser at YDS, based on your application materials and concentration. The adviser list has traditionally been posted during BTFO on The Wall in the common room, and everyone frantically scrambles to track down their adviser for an introductory meeting. Keep in mind that many faculty members do not return to campus until after BTFO, and are still in the process of sorting out their own beginning-of-term conflicts so they might not respond to emails right away. Many faculty have sign-up sheets on their doors for appointments, which is often easier than trying to schedule something through email.

Since every professor varies in temperament and personality, it is only safe to assume that each adviser will have a different relationship with their advisees. At the end of the day, though, they are a tremendous resource for you, especially as first year students bursting with questions and ideas. Before meeting with your adviser, look at the course offerings and look at your requirements, and try to determine some options of what might work for you. Be prepared for them to make (sometimes rather strong) suggestions for changes, but that doesn't mean you need to take their advice, either. They know what they're talking about and they know what works and what fulfills what, but you know yourself and what you want out of your education, so don't be afraid to push back when you disagree about your course selections.

But for now, since it's still summer, just
focus on BBQs and board games!

As you continue at YDS your adviser will become increasingly important for crafting your course load, working with you to ensure that you meet your requirements, helping you with a thesis or outside project, and guiding you through a course selection process that can be extremely frustrating sometimes. Because they are so important, if you feel strongly that you would like to switch advisers for any reason, know that this is permitted and happens rather frequently (Patrick did this at the the end of last semester because of different academic interests and plans, for example).

And so much more...
As previously stated, all of this and so much more will be covered during BTFO by a wonderful group of intrepid YDSers who are more than capable of answering any and all of your questions. They will also be discussing the technical aspects of class registration (navigating the website, ensuring that your selections have gone through, using the online class server) as well the differences between taking classes at YDS and taking classes at downtown schools such as the Graduate School or the School of Music. Brace yourselves, there is a whole lot more coming your way. For now, we hope this simultaneously puts you at ease and gets you excited for the fall semester!