For Indecisive Students, Add/Drop Seen as an Extended Shopping Period

Undergraduates are given a week to shop courses at the beginning of each semester, but for many of the thousands who took advantage of the add/drop deadline on Feb. 24, one week is not enough time to gauge whether or not they will succeed in the course.

Instead, these students and resident deans said that the four-week period before “fifth Monday” acts as an extension of shopping week, rendering soft the study card deadline.

“One week is a very short time to fully understand what is going on in a class,” said Alind Z. Amedi ’16, who noted that he has dropped one course after the study card deadline each semester once he realized they did not meet his expectations. “During [shopping week], the first few lectures are not reflective of what the class will be like later.”

Amedi is by no means alone in shuffling his schedule in the middle of the semester.

By Feb. 24, the deadline to add or drop a course, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Registrar’s Office had processed 1,745 undergraduate add forms and 2,091 undergraduate drop forms, according to FAS Registrar Michael P. Burke. Though students can still withdraw from courses until March 10, the Feb. 24 deadline was the last day on which the action would not appear on their transcripts.

According to Adams House Resident Dean Sharon L. Howell, many students commit to more courses than they intend to take in order to avoid paying the $40 fee for a late study card.

“I know that some students, when they file their study card, are not fully sure yet about their classes,” Howell said. “Rather than delay their study card, they add five courses.”

Other students are more deliberate and said that they submit alternative courses on their study card, in case something goes wrong with a top choice.

Athena P. Bowe ’15, who dropped Science of Living Systems 16: “Human Evolution and Human Health” in favor of an additional semester of her junior tutorial, said that she had always intended to take the tutorial but wanted to ensure the course met her expectations before fully committing.

“I wasn’t sure how the junior tutorial was going to be set up, and I thought it might be a little messy, so I thought I might have a backup,” Bowe said.

As it stands, the add/drop deadline falls before when the majority of midterms take place. Many students said that these first papers and exams offer the best indication of whether or not a course is right for them. As a result, they said, the deadline should be pushed even further into the semester.

“If [the deadline to drop a course] were right after the first midterm, you could take the midterm and realize, ‘Oh my gosh, that was really hard. I did terrible. I should drop this and not have the fear of having a withdrawal on my transcript,’” said Cody R. Dales ’15.

Dales noted that other peer institutions—like MIT, Yale, and Cornell—allow students to drop courses between seven and 12 weeks into the semester, following at least the first round of midterms.

“In a perfect world…you would perhaps get some feedback in the form of an exam or a paper to gauge how well you are getting the material before you have to make the decision to add or drop a class,” Crimson Yard Resident Dean Catherine R. Shapiro said. “But there has to be some sort of policy.”

Bowe agreed with Shapiro, noting that students already have all of shopping week and add/drop period to decide what courses to take.

“It would be nice to have the option to drop later, but at some time you have to realize you have to commit to a class,”  Bowe said.

—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at meg.bernhard@thecrimson.com Follow her on twitter @Meg_Bernhard.