Pre-registration for the spring 2012 semester begins this week, when students have the opportunity to select their next semester's course loads in advance. With over 3,500 students selecting courses and with myriad professors, classes and departments to organize, the Office of the University Registrar has, as it does every semester, made everything very easy and accessible for students.

The registrar's system that allows students to select classes is consistently organized and easy to work with. Some universities require students to register by hand or have websites that are poorly laid out and difficult to navigate. Other universities give registration preference to seniors. Our university, however, creates an equal opportunity for all students to pre-register and provides an easy-to-access and clear website that lists the classes from which students can choose.

The lottery system that distributes students' registration times, while occasionally frustrating, is designed to provide all students with an equal chance of obtaining their first-choice classes. Under this system, students are arbitrarily assigned a time to register for the first of three days to select courses, with their subsequent two time slots based on the first one. Additionally, the system benefits students studying abroad—all of whom live in different time zones than theirs—by giving them the advantage of registering first. This system is by no means perfect; many of the most desirable slots get filled during the first period of registration, prohibiting students with later time slots from enrolling. Nevertheless, this system is commendable because it gives students a fair chance for the first enrollment slot.

Also, the system allows students to add gym classes, which are generally capped, in addition to other classes because they have not been assigned a credit value. This enables students to plan to fulfill their gym requirements fairly easily.

While our course selection website is easy to navigate, there is room for improvement. Our system has three separate websites: LATTE, Sage, and the registrar's course selection page. It would be useful to explore possibilities for integrating these three sites into one platform.

This would benefit students by streamlining the process of registering for courses.

Overall, the convenience of the registrar's website offers a clear incentive for students to pre-register, which is helpful for the registrar, faculty and departments as a whole. According to Registrar Mark Hewitt, 96 percent of undergraduate students enrolled for spring 2011 classes last year.

This impressive rate of pre-registration participation indicates that the registrar is accomplishing the goal of providing an efficient mechanism for students to choose their courses.

Given these successes, we hope the Office of the Registrar will continue to provide elements that please the community and retain students' interest in pre-registration in the future.