BU considers ‘shopping period’

As second semester gets ready to kick into full gear, many Boston University students still find themselves adding, dropping and altering their classes to form the perfect schedule.

But at some universities, students are given the option to go “shopping” for their classes the first week of school before signing up for the courses.

This shopping period allows students to attend whatever classes they want during the first week of school. Students register after they test out different courses.

Some students who attend schools that have shopping periods said they love that it helps them choose the most interesting classes.

“You aren’t getting locked into a class you don’t want to take, and you may discover a class you didn’t know you wanted to take,” said Harvard University freshman Nathan Hilgartner.

While shopping may be beneficial for students, it can also be a strain for the administration and the logistical side of course planning, students said.

“From the school’s perspective, it’s difficult when planning staffing and it’s difficult to know the number of course assistants are needed,” said Harvard sophomore Christian Anderson.

However, BU is “still formulating policy and there is nothing concrete,” said BU Records Supervisor Alpha Sanneh.

“The Associate Registrar is currently doing research and looking at the practices of other schools to figure out what the benefits are and see if a shopping period could work at BU,” Sanneh said.

While BU officials think shopping period is a good idea in theory, Sanneh said they have some significant logistical concerns.

“It’s a major disruption in class registration,” Sanneh said. “With [BU’s] huge population, we need a huge change [with the registration system] so things don’t collapse.”

Many BU students said they liked the idea of a shopping period, but said they did not think that it is necessary.
“In my situation it would be unnecessary because I’m never deciding on classes,” said College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Anja Pilja. “They are all planned out for me.”
School of Management senior Vladimir Bulvakhter said she felt a shopping period would make registration easier.
“Students would have more choices and be really sure what they are interested in,” Bulvakhter said.
Other students said they thought that because BU has never had a shopping period before, students do not need a test run to pick out satisfactory classes.

“You can usually get a good sense of a class from talking to people or RateMyProfessors.com,” said CAS sophomore Danielle Callahan, referring to a website which allows students to rate and review their professors.

Some students also questioned whether a shopping period would help reduce dropped classes.
“[Shopping period] probably wouldn’t be that significant, because you probably would end up sticking with [the classes] you try out,” Pilja added.