Your class schedule in college is so important! It’ll literally control your entire life from top to bottom.
Here’s how to craft the schedule of your dreams:
1. Sign up for classes as early as possible
When it comes to scheduling and signing up for classes, make sure you do them as soon as you are able to. Most colleges allow students to sign up for classes in order of their class rank. So for example, seniors will be allowed first to sign up and freshmen will be last. That being said, you can still get great time slots and your preferred classes regardless of the date/time of sign up. You just need to be quick to sign up when your class rank is allowed to do so. The best way to be prepared for registration today is to plan ahead of time of how you want your schedule to look based on what’s available.
2. Plan for meal times
Always make sure to leave some extra time in your schedule for a quick bite to eat somewhere. Most colleges have loads of food options around campus, but the lines can get pretty long quickly. It helps to block out around 1-2 hours around lunchtime so that way you can enjoy your food and relax before your classes start. The same goes for breakfast!
3. Create an outline of the credits required for graduation
Before you begin creating your schedule for each semester, make sure you have a complete or outline of your major’s graduation requirements. Your advisor will normally also help keep you on track, but advises hundreds of students with the same major, so they might forget something or not remember your academic story during your meeting. A lot of majors will have all of the class requirements online so it’s super easy to print it out and keep somewhere safe.
4. Balance the level of difficulty between classes
When building your college schedule, you want to balance the difficulty levels of all of the classes that you want to take. Taking more than 1 or 2 hard classes in a semester or multiple classes in a similar field that you struggle with may be too much to handle. You won’t want to overload yourself with a bunch of hard classes and make yourself more stressed out than you need to be.
5. Consider your current or future work schedule
A lot of students work through college, whether it be part-time, full time, on-campus, or off-campus. Anytime that you are planning out your coursework, always keep into account your current or future work schedule. For example, if you are planning to work in the evenings, you can try to have your classes end around noon or 1 pm so you have enough time to go to work. But you could easily have a completely different schedule. Regardless of your work situation or schedule, always try to plan for your hours in your class schedule.
Scheduling for your college classes can be pretty stressful, but honestly as long as you have a plan, it’s not that bad. Do your research, plan ahead of time, and check-in with your advisor any time that you’re having a crisis. I promise, no matter what, it will all work out in the end.
