Guide:Registration
Most classes at RPI are available for enrollment during course registration. Blah blah blah registering
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.
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.
| 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 |
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
If you are considering multiple plans for a semester, you can create a new schedule with the Course Set selector on the navbar.
Quatalog
Planning further ahead than a semester is difficult with QuACS. Higher-level courses are commonly offered in only select semesters. The Quatalog shows data for when classes have historically been offered, but does not have any functionality for schedule planning
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.
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.
Glossary
College classes are structured very differently from high school classes. Here are some terms worth knowing.
- 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.
- Primary Instructor
- The instructor listed first on the instructor list for a section, also sometimes delineated with a (P). In many first-year classes, the primary instructor represents the course coordinator, not necessarily the lecture instructor.
- 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 either 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.
- Drop Deadline
- (1, 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.
- (2, 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.