The Game of Picking Classes

Everyone who goes to Michigan knows how intense backpacking and registering can get sometimes. You are a week away from your registration date, and you go to Wolverine Access to check out the classes you backpacked. A week ago, every class was open with plenty of seats. Obviously now half of the classes you were planning on taking were full and you have to scramble to fill your schedule. It seems like there are no available classes to fill your requirements, and you may start to panic.

Picking your schedule is a talent. You need to see how many credits you need, allocated to what departments, and then you pick the (easiest) best classes to fill the time slots. Of course, you make sure to avoid Fridays, and attempt to wake up as late as possible. Then you magically mesh the classes together to fill the perfect schedule. I don’t know about everyone else, but when it is my time to register, I am staring at the clock ready to click “proceed to next step” and finish registering.

It is a game, sort of. You have a list of choices, put them in a shopping cart, and then either take your chances on a wait list, or fit the right pieces together covering a full semester of classes. There are ways to essentially “cheat” in this game too. If you only plan on taking 15 credits, but want to get on some wait lists to see if you get into a preferred class, you can backpack multiple classes and just wait on the wait list to see if a spot opens up. Or, you can take a class pass/fail that you need for requirements, and put more effort into other classes to raise your GPA.

What I am trying to say is that scheduling in college has many aspects of game theory. There are rules, restrictions, requirements, time constraints, objectives, and opponents (other students competing for the same spots in classes). By being savvy and experienced in this game, you can find ways to get the schedule you want, with the classes you need. As of now, I have 8:30 a.m. classes Monday-Thursday next semester; hopefully I will be able to use some game theory to change that up.