Students Anxious About the Add/Drop Deadline

Cassandra N. Bowe ’11 dropped four classes and added two classes right in time for Tuesday’s add/drop deadline.

“I thought it was no big deal that I could do whatever I wanted with my classes this semester,” she says. “My resident dean thought it was perhaps a little more drastic than I did.”

Yet Bowe says she got the signature of her resident dean, which she needed to change her course schedule. Although Bowe has been attending lectures for her new classes since the week after shopping period, she will not be formally enrolled in them until her paperwork is processed, four weeks after the start of the semester.

Because Presidents’ Day falls on Monday, this semester’s add/drop deadline is next Tuesday, a day later than the usual deadline—the fifth Monday of the semester.

While students enjoy the late add/drop deadline—which gives them the freedom to change their course load several weeks into the semester—some say there are problems with the system.

Some students who have added a course near the add/drop deadline say it can be challenging to do well after missing the first four weeks of class, and others say it can be hard to even find professors willing to admit them so late in the semester.

A FORGIVING DEADLINE

The College extends the add deadline later into the term than most colleges, but its drop deadline falls in the middle of the pack, according to Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris.

As of the no-fee add/drop deadline on Feb. 7—which falls on the third Monday of the semester—students had added or dropped “close to 2,100 courses,” according to Registrar Michael P. Burke.

He adds that this figure represents fewer than 2,100 students, since many students dropped one class in order to add another.

Burke says he expects even more students to add or drop a course by Tuesday’s final deadline.

Although the College allows students to take advantage of the late deadline, administrators question the advisability of adding courses so late into the semester.

Harris says he thinks that students almost always decrease their odds of success by adding a course after missing weeks of classes.

“I’d say, in almost any case, that this is not wise,” he says.

Lecturer on Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Andrew Berry, who is an academic advisor, says he has signed about 15 add/drop forms in the past few weeks.

About half of these students have simply dropped from five courses to four—effectively “extending shopping period beyond one week to three or four weeks”—he says.

But for advisees who are adding a new course near the add/drop deadline, Berry says he recommends that they play to their academic strengths.

“If they’re adding a course that they already have a strong background in, the first few weeks are probably not too vital,” he says.

Students who have been sitting in on class lectures before completing the official paperwork—essentially auditing the course—usually have less trouble catching up to speed, he adds.

ADDING AT THE DEADLINE

Bowe says that in a previous semester, she added a Literature C course near the deadline to fulfill a Core requirement.

She says that although her teaching fellow tried to help her make up the work, Bowe says she never truly caught up with the workload.

“In a class I didn’t know much about, I thought I got off on the wrong foot,” she says. “I felt like I was really at a disadvantage the rest of the semester.”

A freshman—who asked to remain anonymous in order to avoid jeopardizing her chance of getting into courses—says she must now find two new classes by Tuesday’s deadline, after dropping an intensive language course that was moving too fast for her.

The freshman says she is worried about succeeding in the courses she chooses, after missing the first four weeks of lecture.

“It’s intimidating starting a class and not knowing what to expect and if you’ll catch up on time,” she says. “I feel like I’m in so much trouble.”

Shelby M. MacLeod ’12 says she is so concerned about making up missed work that she has never added or dropped a course at Harvard.

Even though she is taking a Visual and Environmental Studies course that she says she is dissatisfied with, she does not plan to drop it because she thinks it would be too difficult to make up four weeks of missed work.

“I feel like it would be more effort to catch up in another class than to just stick with this one,” she says.

FINDING THE COURSE

Although the Committee on Undergraduate Education has discussed making changes to the add/drop deadline, no alterations have been put in motion.

“The feeling has been that [the add/drop deadlines] have to be the same,” says Harris.

There could be repercussions to separating the two deadlines, he says.

“I think it would certainly mean more students enrolling in five [courses] and dropping, and that has consequences for enrollment management and rooms and sections,” he says. “I certainly wouldn’t want to encourage that.”

But Harris says that the late deadline to add a course can be difficult for students who do not realize that professors must approve any add forms after study card day.

“I do think our add deadline is too late,” says Harris, who sets his own deadline for allowing students to add his courses.

“I’ll let anybody in in the second week,” he says. “I’ve made one or two exceptions, but I won’t let anybody in in the fourth week, and the third week I negotiate.”

On the other hand, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and of Physics Adam E. Cohen ’01—who is teaching Physical Sciences 1: “Chemical Bonding, Energy, and Reactivity: An Introduction to the Physical Sciences” this semester—says he thinks the extended add/drop deadline gives students the flexibility to adjust their class schedule if needed.

“It’s good for the system to have built in special arrangements for students whose circumstances are unusual,” he says.

However, the freshman who is searching for two new courses says she wishes she had been better informed about the process earlier in the semester.

“I’ve e-mailed a lot of professors and they said that they already had to cap enrollment, or that they’d rather not let someone in this late, or ‘thank you for your interest, but no,’” she says. “I would probably have tried switching courses earlier if I knew I’d be in such a jam and looking for a long time for courses and not having any.”

She says she thinks the administration should be more up front about the difficulties of adding a course this close to the add/drop deadline.

“If it’s just a myth that add/drop period is actually four weeks and it’s actually three—or two—let people know,” she says. “It affects decisions.”

—Julie M. Zauzmer contributed reporting to this story.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@college.harvard.edu.