“This could turn into a paperwork nightmare and not accomplish anything,” he said.

Rohit Chopra ’04, who served last year as a student member of CUE, said he predicts that as long as students add and drop classes, enrollment figures will remain unpredictable.

“I don’t think that preregistration is going to produce any numbers that are helpful. Harvard students are unafraid of switching courses, or even concentrations,” he said.

Chopra said he was also concerned that the system would prevent the generation of new courses, since deadlines for finalizing the course catalog would have to be pushed up.

Lewis agreed that finalizing the course catalog months in advance—it is usually not ready until June, while preregistration for fall classes were occur before summer break—would be a significant concern.

“We have a catalog that changes more than at most other places and one question that needs to be resolved is how to make enough information available in a timely way,” she said.

And while Kirby said shopping period will remain, when and how course lotteries would be run has yet to be determined.

“We should think carefully about whether we can make the lottery situation better by holding them earlier,” Wolcowitz said.

Lewis said she understood that students who had preregistered for a class would be given preference in the lottery.

“The presumption is that if you preregister you would have priority if there was any constraint,” she said.

Lewis said other issues that need to be addressed are capping the number of classes for which students could register and whether the system would apply to incoming first-years.

And more concerns will likely arise as discussion of the proposal continues and includes undergraduates.

“Students have more information on the likelihood that it would work than we do,” Lewis said.

And the students on CUE will have a chance to discuss the issue at its first meeting on Oct. 16.

But Wolcowitz said students should not be overly concerned with the proposed change.

“I think it is important that we design a strategy that does not adversely affect undergraduates,” he said. “We will maintain as much of the flexibility that students currently have, only deviating from this when we believe we can actually improve things.”

—Staff writer Jessica E. Vascellaro can be reached at vascell@fas.harvard.edu.