College life is many things: fragmented freshman friend groups, midnight ramen followed by a doomed exam, naps on the Quad, a scornful pile of laundry and Tide PODS. Among these quintessential college experiences, one stands out: the famed shopping period, when students freely explore classes before committing to their schedule for the semester...
That is—so I’ve heard.
At Cornell, there is no shopping period. Instead, here on top of the hill, students pre-enroll in courses months before the semester begins. While this system may seem efficient, it also charges students with a winding receipt of pressure, missing assignments, a frantic start to a semester, and a Russian roulette game of guessing workload and syllabi. It’s time to rethink this approach.
The shopping period is a microcosm of university. Fast-paced, bustling, and messy, the shopping period is a laboratory for possibilities; students can test out their various “futures”—how early they need to wake up, how many hours they must spend in the library—without committing blindly. The immediate pressure of diving into coursework is alleviated while courses are being finalized in this week of “open-houses”.
Harvard University was once the crème de la crème of the shopping period: allowing students to “try-on” courses before registering. Yet this icon of college life is dwindling. In 2022, Harvard permanently replaced this tradition with Cornell’s pre-registration system, despite a mighty 96% support for its predecessor within the undergraduate student body. Just a year earlier, Yale University also kissed their own shopping week farewell after its fifty-year reign.
Yet is the shopping period’s successor and conqueror of countless colleges—the pre-enrollment system—any better? Based on my experiences here at Cornell, absolutely not.
Pre-registration is an ignis fatuus, an illusion of control. It forces students, including myself, to plan their schedules during the previous semester—amid prelims, essays, and looming deadlines—when they have neither the time nor the information needed to make an informed decision.
As a result, I—and many others— are forced to embark on a treacherous, self-designated shopping week, leaving the pre-enrollment system essentially and utterly meaningless. However, this personalized shopping week is far from duty-free; without an official shopping period, the stakes are much higher. Everyday spent finalizing a schedule is a day of missed material. Adding a class in the second week often means an immediate quiz, project, or even paper due within the next few days. If multiple classes are added, due dates collide, missed readings conglomerate into a hundred pages, and a hunt for lecture slides ensues. Just like that, the semester commences with a race against time, anxiety, and the sinking feeling of falling behind.
So why does Cornell cling onto a system that seems to create more stress rather than a sense of stability?
Perhaps, because Cornell is not ready for a sudden jump to the shopping period. Pre-enrollment still offers logistical benefits—helping manage class size, and ensuring classroom availability.
But compromise is achievable.
Cornell should introduce a pre-enrollment preview, a digital tool offering past syllabi, lecture recordings, and student reviews. Free from the pushes and shoves of thousands of students roaming in and out of classrooms, or awkward “excuse me”s leaving a lecture early to squeeze in a ninth one, this tech-savvy cousin of a shopping period would allow students such as myself to escape the cycle of charades, hypothesizing what my future schedule would realistically be like. With this virtual “fitting room”, students are less daunted with the actual pre-enrollment itself, and the add period would not spiral into a quicksand of desperation.
As I near the end of my time as an undergraduate Cornellian, I hope future students can be a part of a new, reformed college experience of enrollment. No system will make enrollment completely stress-free, we are Cornell students after all, but selected courses should be an exciting step in our academic exploration—not an unnecessary source of anxiety. After all, behind the grades and credits, each semester is a testament to our commitment to learning. Cornell should do what it must to tear away at the troubles of enrollment that shroud this reminder.
Serin Koh is a fourth year student in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her fortnightly column And That’s the Skoop explores student, academic and social culture, as well as national issues, at Cornell. She can be reached at skoh@cornellsun.com.
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