Cassandra N. Bowe ’11 dropped four classes and added two classes right in time for Tuesday’s add/drop deadline.

“I thought it was no big deal that I could do whatever I wanted with my classes this semester,” she says. “My resident dean thought it was perhaps a little more drastic than I did.”

Yet Bowe says she got the signature of her resident dean, which she needed to change her course schedule. Although Bowe has been attending lectures for her new classes since the week after shopping period, she will not be formally enrolled in them until her paperwork is processed, four weeks after the start of the semester.

Because Presidents’ Day falls on Monday, this semester’s add/drop deadline is next Tuesday, a day later than the usual deadline—the fifth Monday of the semester.

While students enjoy the late add/drop deadline—which gives them the freedom to change their course load several weeks into the semester—some say there are problems with the system.

Some students who have added a course near the add/drop deadline say it can be challenging to do well after missing the first four weeks of class, and others say it can be hard to even find professors willing to admit them so late in the semester.

A FORGIVING DEADLINE

The College extends the add deadline later into the term than most colleges, but its drop deadline falls in the middle of the pack, according to Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris.

As of the no-fee add/drop deadline on Feb. 7—which falls on the third Monday of the semester—students had added or dropped “close to 2,100 courses,” according to Registrar Michael P. Burke.

He adds that this figure represents fewer than 2,100 students, since many students dropped one class in order to add another.

Burke says he expects even more students to add or drop a course by Tuesday’s final deadline.

Although the College allows students to take advantage of the late deadline, administrators question the advisability of adding courses so late into the semester.

Harris says he thinks that students almost always decrease their odds of success by adding a course after missing weeks of classes.

“I’d say, in almost any case, that this is not wise,” he says.

Lecturer on Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Andrew Berry, who is an academic advisor, says he has signed about 15 add/drop forms in the past few weeks.