When people complain about the arduous journey of the pre-med track, buzzwords emerge like numbers on a bingo card. If anything, “words” is a stretch; instead, acronyms and nicknames like MCAT and orgo stick out in our humanities-deprived vocabulary. What you often don’t hear, though, are complaints over the inability actually to enroll in a course. Given Cornell’s academic rigor, complaints should center on course content, regardless of major or pre-professional track. Yet, with Cornell’s chronic over-enrollment, class availability has become the limiting reactant in graduation progress, career goals, declaring majors and minors or simple interest in academic exploration.
Beginning in fall 2022, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations implemented a new form of pre-enrollment where students are automatically enrolled in their core class requirements. The system is part of ILR’s new curriculum that will apply to all students who joined ILR in fall 2022 and beyond, including all current freshmen and sophomore transfer students in the school.
This means that the Office of Student Services chooses lecture and discussion times, as well as the professors that students get. Even if a student would like to make adjustments to these pre-assigned core classes, such as changing their discussion times, students were told by OSS that they are no longer allowed to do so.
Because of this lack of flexibility in choosing the specifics of core classes, some students who planned out their schedules before coming to Cornell dislike the new system.
“Before coming to the school I had a very particular plan on what core classes I would be taking for each semester,” said Adam Senzon ’26. “I had planned it out perfectly; I knew which professors taught better for macroeconomics, but instead I got a different one.”
If students are enrolled in specific lecture or discussion times that overlap with another course they would like to take, they are no longer able to enroll in that alternative course. “Personally, there have been several elective courses I’ve wanted to take this semester, and sign up for next semester, that I simply haven’t been able to because the time [or] day they are offered intersects with pre-enrolled classes,” said Shoshannah Odinyayeva ’26.
Every person I know has had at least one awful pre-enroll experience, but guess what, they’re doing fine. I didn’t finalize my first-year schedule until about a week into the semester after enough people dropped the classes I wanted. My friend slept through enrollment last semester, but she’s still on track to graduate on time. At this point in my college career, I’m over spamming professors with emails and having nightmares over missing out on Introduction to Web Development.
Students are continuing to experience delays in their financial aid packages, leaving some uncertain about their ability to afford attending this fall.
So, if on-campus housing capacity is truly the limiting reagent in the fulfillment of “any person, any study,” then Cornell should look to other avenues of expanding its reach.
A day before course enrollment begins, Cornell hosted a forum to clarify the enrollment process as students scramble for answers during a chaotic move-in week.
You are a second semester sophomore or junior (maybe even a freshman) here at Cornell. The classes you signed up for during pre-enroll are working out great. You have time for lunch everyday, you go to bed at a reasonable hour each night and maybe you are even enrolled in a few classes that are helping you knock out those hefty graduation requirements early. Then, on the second Friday of the semester, an email from the registrar pops up in your inbox. It reads like a more stern version of the following:
“Dear student,
To make room for a second semester senior who is struggling to meet their graduation requirements, we have decided to remove you from a class you love.
