Some students at ASU are able to register for classes weeks before most others — but this often results in classes being full before other students, who receive later access, can enroll.
Two websites created by current and former ASU students aim to help students get a seat in the classes they want to take that are filled when registration opens. ASU Class Finder and Perfect Schedule can ease students' minds by tracking when seats in full classes become available.
Brogan Taylor, a sophomore studying human nutrition, said being in Barrett, the Honors College, which gets priority class registration, has helped her get into important classes that fill up quickly.
“By having ... first pick of those classes, I’ve never really had a problem,” she said.
Her sister, Molly Taylor, a non-honors freshman majoring in medical studies, however, has experienced issues getting into classes.
“When I went to do my orientation and registration, most of the classes I wanted were filled,” she said.
Molly Taylor said she only got into one of the several filled classes she wished to take.
“I just kept checking if someone had dropped it and then I picked it up,” she said.
But several student-made websites have a potential solution.
Steven Schneider, an ASU graduate student studying mechanical engineering, said he saw the need for a free class registration search service when he was an undergraduate student. So, he created the ASU Class Finder.
“When I was a sophomore I was changing my mind all the time about the classes that I wanted to take,” he said. “I wanted something that could monitor those full classes so I could sign up for them.”
Schneider said he started the site because he did not want to pay for other similar class tracking services, so he took it upon himself to create a free one.
“It was mostly just as a hobby, I liked just learning how to make a website and everything,” he said.
Schneider said students can simply register with the site and select the courses and sections that they wish to enroll into. The site monitors the available seats in the classes and notifies the students when seats open so they can fill the seats before others do.
Perfect Schedule is a site also designed for ASU students to track seats in full classes, for a $10 fee, and an extra $3 for any additional sections of the same class they want to track.
Read more: Class scheduling website still active eight years later
Former ASU student Rocky Smith created Perfect Schedule in 2004, and more recently handed it over to a former co-worker at Microsoft, David Lowe.
Eddie Vinciguerra, who is pursuing his master's degree in mechanical engineering at ASU, said he frequently uses ASU Class Finder.
Vinciguerra said the site made it possible for him to get into the popular classes that students wake up early to register for. He also said sites like Perfect Schedule, which are fee-based, never appealed to him when a free option was available.
“Why pay when someone else does something just as good?” he said.
Reach the reporter at mlutesad@asu.edu or follow @mackinleyjade on Twitter.
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