Guide:Registration

Most classes at RPI are available for enrollment during course registration. This page contains guides and information related to planning for registration and registering for classes.

Registration Periods

Registration for the fall and spring semesters occurs in two phases. Pre-registration for the spring semester opens around early November, and pre-registration for the fall semester opens in March. The pre-registration phase usually lasts 2-3 weeks and is when most enrolled students register for classes. It is generally referred to simply as registration by the student body.

Around 2 weeks before the beginning of the semester, registration will reopen and remain available until the deadline to add courses, which is set 2 weeks from the first day of classes. Specific dates for the pre-registration period, registration period, and add deadline are listed in the academic calendar.

The summer semester does not use a pre-registration phase. Instead, registration opens in early March and remains open until the add course deadline.

First-Year Registration

Incoming freshmen register for their first semester within their own registration period, usually in July. From the spring semester onwards, all students use the standard registration periods.

Time Tickets

During the pre-registration period, students will be allowed to register during an allotted time ticket. Time tickets will generally be announced a few weeks before pre-registration begins via email. The email will be sent from registrar@rpi.edu and often uses the subject line “IMPORTANT REGISTRATION INFO.”

Time tickets can also be viewed on SIS. From the SIS home page, select the Student Dashboard. Note that this is different from the Registration Dashboard. The registration notices tab will show upcoming time tickets.

A screenshot of the SIS Student Dashboard. The Registration Notices button is in the top right corner

The Registration Notices menu

Time tickets can be as early as 8:00 AM and have been observed as late as 4:00 PM. The antecedence of tickets is determined by credit hours achieved, including credits transferred from AP courses and other institutions. Seniors by credit tend to be assigned tickets for times within the first few days of pre-registration, and each subsequent class is staggered later. Time tickets will be open from their start date and time until the end of the pre-registration period.

Priority Time Tickets

It is possible to gain priority time tickets through various methods. Priority registration will always be at 8:00 AM on the first day of pre-registration. These time tickets are given to students with VA benefits, and on at least one occasion, have been raffled off to students as prizes.

Holds

Certain administrative departments can apply holds on registration. Holds will block class registration entirely until lifted. The table below describes some types of holds. To see if you have any holds, navigate to the Student Dashboard. The Holds menu button is located next to the Registration Notices menu (see Time Tickets above).

Types of Registration Holds

Type	Means of Resolution
Financial agreement	Complete the financial agreement
SAM	Meet with your faculty advisor; for freshmen, meet with a first year advisor for your school
Medical	Send requested medical records to the health center

Financial Agreement

The Financial Responsibility Agreement is accessible on SIS, in the Students- Important Links section. Click the button containing "Financial Responsibility Agreement" and click through the agreement

Planning for Registration

Students generally plan their courses around their respective major templates. Templates can be found in the catalog under the programs section, as well as advising pages for the respective schools. Students are generally not required to follow the strict order of their major template as long as they complete the required courses. However, prerequisites force some order for many major-specific classes.

Advising

The various schools retain first year advisors to help students plan their schedules and register for courses. Incoming first years will be contacted by their advisor via their RPI email in late June. The advising hubs and more information can be found on the student success website.

RPI schedules a period for fall planning and advising ahead of freshman registration, often in late June. The various first-year advisors often hold webinars or drop-in advising periods during this time. Advisors are generally still accessible outside of the advising period, but run larger sessions during this time to help large numbers of students simultaneously.

Students are assigned a faculty advisor after their first year. Faculty advisors are displayed on the Student Dashboard in SIS in the Advisors section. Students are required to meet with an advisor before spring registration, and will usually have a hold placed on registration until their advisor lifts it. Freshmen will meet with a school advisor; sophomores and upperclassmen will meet with their faculty advisor. Student Advisor Meeting (SAM) holds were not applied in Spring 2026 following the overhaul of SIS, though this may be fixed in the future.

QuACS

The most widely used course planner at RPI is QuACS. QuACS scrapes data from SIS and organizes it in a more readable format. It cannot be used to directly register for classes, but it has useful features that SIS lacks. The home screen is organized by department.

The home screen of QuACS, displaying the various course codes

The navbar contains buttons for Course Set (1), semester (2), Prerequisites (3), and Schedule (4). Ensure the semester indicator displays the semester for which you are planning.

To use the course scheduler, find a course you intend to take. Courses usually have multiple sections. If you know what section you would like to be in, select those sections by clicking on them. They will be highlighted blue.

The class dropdown on QuACS, with two sections selected

If you do not know what section you would like to be in or want to see options, select the Toggle all Sections button. All sections will be highlighted.

The Toggle All Sections option in use

Each section will show how many seats remain. During pre-registration and registration, these numbers may be inaccurate. At the bottom of every page is a note displaying the time since the data was last updated. SIS will always contain the most up-to-date data.

When you have selected your classes, click the Schedule button on the navbar. QuACS will generate all possible permutations of the selected courses, which you may browse using the caret buttons at the top of the page.

One of 114 generated calendars with the selected courses

If you are considering multiple plans for a semester, you can create a new schedule with the Course Set selector on the navbar.

Other Registration Tools

Planning further ahead than a semester is difficult with QuACS. Higher-level courses are commonly offered in only select semesters. In addition, because of the long process required to alter the official catalog, it is often very inaccurate. In addition to inaccurately stating when classes are offered, it also includes many classes that are not offered at all (such as MANE-4440, Critical Reactor Lab, listed in the Catalog despite not being offered since Spring 2018).

The Quatalog helps work around this. It shows data for when classes have historically been offered, but does not have any functionality for schedule planning. Be cautious when using the Quatalog to extrapolate for future semesters; professors often go on sabbatical or some other form of leave, and so even if a class has been taught for a decade straight, if it hinges on one professor it could not be offered.

An additional tool for long-term planning is Heliocampus, which provides RPI students the ability to see prior syllabi for courses. Although not fully complete and often changing (as before, be wary of extrapolating out earlier course policies/structures to now, no matter how consistent they've been over the years), it can often provide a valuable way to get a feel for classes, especially smaller electives where finding someone who has taken it may be difficult. For a tutorial on how to use this tool, see Accessing Syllabi via Heliocampus.

The Plan Ahead Tool

SIS has its own planner. While this one lacks some of QuACS' useful scheduling functions, it allows students to register for all of their courses with one button. Not only is this convenient, but it can also give students an edge when registering for classes that have a few seats remaining that are likely to be taken quickly. It is most practical to use QuACS for actual planning and the SIS planner for making registration faster.

The planning tool is available on the Registration Dashboard. Click "Plan Ahead."

Select a semester and continue. Click "Create a New Plan." The Find Classes menu will show fields for searching for classes.

Subject is the course code. You can search it in its full name (“Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering”) or by its 4-letter code (“MANE”). Course number is not the CRN; It is the four digits at the end of the course code (ENGR-1100)

Find your class and click “View Sections”. Even if the class only has one section, you must click “View Sections” rather than “Add Course” for the whole course. If you click "Add Course", it will add the class, but as a placeholder that you can't register for when the time comes.

When all courses are selected, click save plan in the bottom right corner.

When registering, you can use this plan to register for all of the selected courses at once.

Registering

With an active time ticket during pre-registration, or during standard registration, students can register for classes via the Registration Dashboard in SIS. From the dashboard, click Register for Classes and select the semester for which you are registering. The Register for Classes menu contains tabs for searching for classes, plans, and schedule and options.

The registration menu. If you wish to search, note as before that "course number" is not the CRN.

If you created a plan in SIS, you can add courses by selecting the Plans tab and clicking the Add All button.

The registration window, with "Add All" in the top-right.

If you did not create a plan in SIS but know your courses' CRNs, you can add courses using the Enter CRNs menu. If you created a schedule using QuACS, the CRNS for your generated schedule are displayed at the bottom of the Schedule page. Individual CRNs are also shown on each schedule block.

If you have not created a schedule prior to registration, you can use the Find Classes tab to search for and add courses.

When you have added your classes via any of the above means, click the Submit button in the bottom right corner to register for the selected courses. If successful, the status fields should show "Registered" for each course.

Glossary

College classes are structured very differently from high school classes. Here are some terms worth knowing to get used to college registration.

Section

The equivalent of a period; a number that represents the instructor, times, and locations in which you are taking a class. Depending on the class, many sections will share some blocks; for example, all PHYS-1200 sections have the same exam block and all CHEM-1100 sections with the same instructor have the same lecture block.

Course Coordinator

A member of the faculty that oversees a course that has a unified syllabus and curriculum. Usually, classes with course coordinators will do the same homework and take the same exams. Most common in large first- and second-year classes.

Primary Instructor

The instructor listed first on the instructor list for a section, also sometimes delineated with a (Primary). Usually delinates your lecture instructor, with other instructors typically being lab instructors or course coordinators.

Recitation

Special time block seen in many classes, especially first- and second-year classes. This time is used differently depending on the class and instructor, but often involves a quiz, review, or a chance to get help on homework.

Test Block

Special time block used for exams outside of lectures, often in a different room. Very common in first- and second-year classes, but becomes less common thereafter. An exam block never

Often on Wednesdays; if not, they are usually in the evening. Signs that a block is an exam block include its designated instructor/room being listed as "TBD" or "None".

Drop Deadline

(common) The time before which you can withdraw from a class without recieving a "W" on your transcript. Since 2024, this has been roughly 2 weeks after the start of classes.

(uncommon) The time before which you can withdraw from a class from SIS, without any need to get special forms or approval. Since 2024, this has been roughly 10 weeks after the start of classes.

Course Reference Number (CRN)

A unique number given to every section of every course.