Uppers Take Part in Lottery For Senior Spring Electives
The senior elective lottery results were announced Monday, Apr. 20 to uppers who signed up for English and select non-English spring electives. Of the 205 uppers who entered the lottery, 175 received their first English elective choice and two did not receive any of their elective choices. 110 out of the 122 students who enrolled in non-English lottery classes received their first choice and 4 received none.
The lottery was introduced in 2007 by then scheduler Patricia Babecki to ensure that uppers would have a better chance of receiving their preferred senior spring elective courses. The process allows students to pick three elective courses whose slots are then assigned to students in a way that aims to guarantee students at least one of the three.
“Exeter has such a hectic schedule so that if [uppers who want to register for classes] miss the thirty minute slot of signing up, they can’t take the class they wanted. The lottery evens that out.”
Some of the elective courses are still not filled with an optimal number of students so that they may be cancelled next year, according to the English department chair Lundy Smith. But the majority of classes will be able to run and most of next year’s seniors will be able to take the courses they have just enrolled in.
Spring in Love, Humor in Writing and Novels into Film were the most popular English electives and received the most student interest. The non-English electives that filled quickly were Science, Technology and Profit in Societies, Sports Science and Introduction to Psychology.
Upper Annie Ning, who is enrolled in her first and third English elective choices, said that although she knows the four students who could not be enrolled in their preferred courses were upset, the lottery allowed for a much more consistent rate of satisfaction than a normal registration process would have.
Although instructors do not yet know which courses they will be teaching next year, many courses are commonly taught by the same faculty; as a result, students often pick courses which their favorite instructors are likely to teach. Ning was one of these people.
“As a new upper, I wanted to be in classes taught by Mr. Perdomo, Ms. Carbonell and Mr. Hearon because I’ve heard so many good things about those teachers. I picked the three [courses] that I knew they would be teaching,” Ning said.
Senior Rachel Baxter, who is now taking English instructor Mercedes Carbonell’s Spring in Love, also used the lottery system to ensure she would be in a class with Carbonell, whom she had been taught by previously and knew she would enjoy again.
Baxter agreed that the lottery system works better than the regular registration system because it does not depend on “first come first serve” as regular registration does.
“Exeter has such a hectic schedule so that if [uppers who want to register for classes] miss the thirty minute slot of signing up, they can’t take the class they wanted. The lottery evens that out,” Baxter said.
Students are usually happy with the courses they receive and the lottery is well liked because it is efficient in making sure people enroll in their first choices. Uppers also have the chance to add or drop classes if they have a change of heart during the open registration period or during the later Add/Drop period.
According to an art from a 2007 issue of The Exonian, “Uppers Bet on Course Lotto Win,” the lottery was established to eliminate the first-come-first-served basis for limited enrollment courses. It was a “more equitable” system which gave everyone an equal chance to register for these courses, Director of Management Informational Technology services Celia Abrams said. Under the old system, many students had trouble with servers crashing or with not being able to sign up because they were away at a game or on a bus when everyone else was rushing to sign up for the select spots.
In 2007, Student Council members were originally worried regarding the lottery system because it increased the chances of senior elective courses not running, as will happen this year. Nevertheless, Student Council passed the lottery because the new system seemed to be more organized.
Alternatively, Student Council considered changing the registration time to begin at 6 a.m. so that students with morning classes could sign up in addition to those who did not have an 8 a.m. class, but decided against it so that Exonians did not have to forfeit sleep to register and because changing the register time would not stop servers from crashing.
Due to the English department’s recent decision to offer electives both in the winter and spring, the lottery system may extend to winter term in coming years The same spring courses are now offered during winter term, but as of now are not part of the lottery. This will allow current uppers to sign up for any course they were not able to get into for the spring, but like spring, the winter courses will not stay in the normal register system. According to Smith, the winter lottery was not able to run this year due to scheduling.
For some uppers, not having a winter term elective lottery was confusing. They did not see the point in the spring lottery if they could sign up for their spring course in the winter.
But despite any confusion, Ning said the lottery, as well as the breadth of course offerings, was beneficial. Baxter agreed. “There are so many [senior elective courses] that I wish I could have chosen more,” she said. “Optimally, I would like to be taking five different senior elective courses right now.”