Do UC schools have a lot of impacted classes?

I attended UC Davis (go Aggies!) and double majored in Psychobiology and Communications. There were definitely classes where seats were very limited, especially in the upper division courses that everyone needed to graduate, such as UWP (Upper Division Writing). Once you determine your major, be sure to plan ahead and meet with a counselor regarding which courses you need to take each quarter to graduate on time. Each major has different requirements to graduate, so think and plan ahead!

Once you get an email notification of when your enrollment date/time is, be sure to add that to your calendar and stay on top of it. I've definitely woken up at 6:00 AM before trying to enroll into courses and ended up waiting over an hour for the portal to load since so many users were on the same web page. It's intense! Do not procrastinate on this!

Also, if you do end up getting waitlisted, priority usually goes to someone who might be graduating that same year. Be sure to talk to the professor in-person since they're the ultimate deciders.

Best of luck!

• MyTien

Hi! I currently attend UC Berkeley so I can only speak for my school. Let's start by defining 'impacted classes' for those other readers seeing this term for the first time. Impacted classes are classes that have more people trying to enroll than seats available and so, the university places various enrollment restrictions that have filters like a minimum GPA requirement (for honors courses), seniority level (for upper-div courses) and department affiliations (being in a certain dept. of engineering and trying to enroll for a eng. course versus being from another college/dept.)

Now, to get to answering your question - no, most classes at UC Berkeley aren't impacted, but a lot of sought-after courses, upper divs are. The system has 'phases' of enrollment that ensures people can enroll fairly.

I Doubled in communications and sociology at UC Santa Barbara and didn't have a hard time with this. There are core classes that are required for your major, but few of them need to be taken in a specific order. It's important to plan ahead and know how many units you need to take in a quarter in order to graduate on time and make sure for classes that are more difficult to get into, you have a 1-2 quarters of a buffer in case you don't get in your first try, but I didn't have issues with this. Also if there's a class you really need and weren't able to sign up online in advance, attend the first few lectures as people will dropout and you can get added to the waitlist.

One piece of advice is that different professors have different ways they handle the waitlist, so I'd definitely go in-person to class.

Recent UC Berkeley grad here! UCs definitely have certain classes (e.g. major requirements, popular breadth classes) that fill up more quickly. However, if there's a UC you'd like to attend, you can definitely navigate that: 1) Make a 4-year plan with 1-2 impacted classes per semester, which you should enroll in in Phase 1 of class registration. 2) Prepare several options for scheduling. Often preferred discussions fill up first, leaving 8 AMs open, which is fine if you need the class! 3) Class waitlists see a good amount of turnover in the first ~2 weeks per semester, so attend the first couple weeks' mandatory lectures and discussions to move up the waitlist as other students drop the class. Choosing a discussion section with a shorter waitlist also boosts your chances a bunch.

I attended UC San Diego. There are certainly classes that can fill up quickly around registration time, typically they were core classes that were requirements for all undergrads. My advice is to make sure you're ready to pounce on spots for core and major class requirements, and that you've done your research!