Harvard’s Registration Is So Off-Course

Last week marked the end of a trying saga: finalizing my spring class schedule.

While course registration was due Nov. 20th — right in the middle of Harvard’s elongated and chaotic midterm season — I chose placeholder classes to avoid the $50 fee for late registration.

I’m sure I wasn’t alone. Harvard’s current course selection system doesn’t make room for carefully-reasoned enrollment decisions. It’s time for a change.

Over winter break, I had more time to reflect on what classes made sense for this semester. In the end, my schedule did a complete 180. While I was mentally preparing for a new set of courses, my official registration on my.harvard told a different story.

As I eagerly awaited Jan. 13th, when the add/drop period began, I was once again disappointed at being unable to switch into classes that were full or conflicted with others.

So rather than spending the last week of my break preparing to come back renewed, I spent it wastefully refreshing my.harvard like I was trying to score coveted concert tickets — except this time, the stakes weren’t a floor seat, but rather fulfilling my graduation requirements.

When I finally got the opportunity to see what I signed up for, it was disastrous. I went to six different classes, and found myself completing assignments for courses I wasn’t even sure I would attend the following week.

Several professors embraced a “hit the ground running” mindset, implicitly encouraged by the registrar's office's early course selection deadlines. They assigned readings and homework before day one and started sections the first week. Meanwhile, other professors still hadn’t finalized their syllabi, deciding to make critical changes to grading schemes or section times, several days into the semester.

It was difficult to reconcile this variance. While I was forced to delve deep into some classes, others still had me on edge, trying to fit in an extra section into my tangled Google Calendar. I can’t help but think that my efforts in figuring out a course schedule could have been put towards something more productive: research, extracurriculars, or spending time with the Harvard community.

Harvard needs to revamp course registration to set both students and professors up for academic success from the first week of the semester.

We need a better system, one that recognizes students’ interests evolve, even over just a month or two, and that professors are people who may struggle to plan every detail of a course months ahead of time.

Such a system is far from a pipe dream. Other colleges have a course registration process that provides students with more flexibility either by offering students a shopping week or encouraging late registration deadlines.

Reintroducing shopping week at Harvard makes sense. It allows students the flexibility to explore a wide array of classes, choosing courses that truly fit their interests, not just their schedules. At Harvard, a school with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary study, it is reasonable to allow students just a week or two to explore classes they otherwise wouldn’t have tried.

Pushing back registration deadlines, even by just a month, would afford students the flexibility to think about their courses for the following semester at a time when they are not bogged down with projects, homework, and exams.

When I registered for classes last semester, I distinctly remember coming out of two midterms the previous week, for physics and statistics, and deciding I really should just stick to the life sciences. It wasn’t until the end of the semester that I realized what I learned from those classes and the benefits they had for me as a student.

Changes to course registration are small but critical. They balance the needs of students while allowing faculty to plan out productive semesters that make for more effective teaching and advising.

Until then, students like me will continue to begin their semesters in a state of frenzy, piecing together schedules like a game of Tetris.

Here’s hoping that Harvard course corrects its class registration system.

Sandhya Kumar ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Statistics in Winthrop House.