Enrollment questions answered

Enrollment often fills the registrar’s office with students needing papers signed, questions answered and schedules made.

Graduating seniors are the first to enroll on Monday, Oct. 26.

Following graduating seniors, seniors not graduating in the spring (90 or more hours) enroll on Tuesday, Oct. 27 and Wednesday, Oct. 28.

Juniors (60 or more hours) enroll Thursday, Oct. 29 and Friday, Oct. 30.

Sophomores (30 or more hours) enroll the following Monday Nov. 2 and Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Freshmen (one or more hours) can enroll the following Wednesday Nov. 4 and Thursday, Nov. 5. Enrollment opens at 7 a.m. on the first day for each group.

If students are unsure how many hours they have, they can view a degree audit on MyOC. For help reading the audit, please visit here.

According to Associate Registrar Karen Driskill, students should take the following steps before their time to enroll approaches: first check for holds, follow up by getting the holds removed and then see their adviser to set up a schedule correctly.

Driskill and  Registrar Stephanie Baird said students most often have questions regarding holds, hours, waitlists and prerequisites.

Most commonly, students have financial holds and transcript holds.

“If they have the high school transcript or college transcript they need to get an official copy sent to us,” Driskill said. “If it’s financial, they need to go see their counselor. Most of it they can do online, but sometimes financial — they need to see them in person, and sometimes they need to get a transcript, and they can’t really do that online.”

Baird said not every class has a waitlist, and students should be aware of this when enrolling.

“If they have questions that aren’t answered by their financial services counselor, or by their adviser, they can come and ask us, especially if it has to do with ‘is this class going to have a waitlist?’ Baird said. “Sometimes students want to know if there is going to be another section added, most of the time the answer to that is no, but sometimes departments do hold on to extra classes to see if there is a need, and then they will open them up.”

Baird said students should watch out for prerequisites when making a preferred list on MyOC. Even if a prerequisite was fulfilled, students should check the grade required to move on to the next course level.

Driskill said she advises students wishing to change their major to come by the office before making their preferred list and enrolling to ensure they are taking the correct classes for their new major.

Driskill also said enrollment tends to be a high traffic time for the registrar’s office, however, there are some ways students can help alleviate the rush.

“We’re all really responsive to emails,” Baird said. “Our responses to emails are slower when we’re at a busy time like enrollment, but that’s nice because if we close for lunch. … We’ll close for two hours at lunch, one hour to eat, one hour to catch up on emails, and so even though a student can’t come in here, we get to their email.”

Driskill said she, with the other members of the registrar’s office, prefer emails or talking in person instead of phone calls. She requests students refrain from calling the office as much as possible. If a student emails registrar@oc.edu, it will alert each employee in the office and the student might receive a faster reply — as whoever can reply first will answer.

Graduating seniors have a few things to look out for when enrolling. Firstly, they need to be aware of their graduation date on their audit. If the date is incorrect and does not show the graduation date as April 2016 — they will not be allowed to enroll on Monday. According to Driskill, most seniors need to get together with someone in the office to go over their degree audit to fill any possible blanks. Anyone graduating in April 2016 will also need to fill out a graduation application, found on MyOC under the services tab and nested under the heading ‘registrar.’

Seniors should be aware they will not be able to walk in the spring this year if they have more classes to complete during the summer. In the past, students who still had a class to complete were allowed to walk with their class. There will be a graduation in the summer for these students.

If graduating seniors have any questions regarding their degree audits and wish to have someone go over it — the office requests they begin coming in after Nov. 9.

“The hardest thing is to tell a kid they’re not graduating,” Driskill said. “If they come and check in November, they have plenty of time to add something, so they can fix it now and hopefully still be able to graduate.”

If students have any questions about what classes they should enroll in, they should talk to their adviser before they go to the registrar.

Students can visit these links to learn how to read their degree audit, register for classes and make a preferred list and how to enroll during the allotted time.

Students should direct any further questions to the registrar at registrar@oc.edu or visit the office in person — located next door to Information Technology and across from Financial Services.