Registration FAQ
For Fall 2023
The following information is applicable only to courses based in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (DAMES). It may not apply to courses based in other departments that are crosslisted with DAMES. The policies and practices of other departments may vary.
- All our culture courses have seats reserved for DAMES majors. Any leftovers that our majors don’t use in the first registration wave will be released before the start of the second wave.
- Our 100-level culture courses have seats reserved for FR/SO. Any leftovers from these will be released before open enrollment starts on August 7.
- Some advanced Chinese and Japanese language courses start out with most or all seats restricted to DAMES majors. We’ll release unused seats here before the second wave starts.
If you are hoping to maybe get in once more seats are released, the absolute best thing to do is waitlist (though you can’t do so until the second wave). Any seats that become available will go to the people on the waitlist first. Note that we sometimes release these seats earlier than the promised date (for instance, if it becomes clear during registration that our majors won’t need as many seats as we set aside for them, we’ll start to release those early).
When you do a search in ConnectCarolina and find the class, the section number is a link. Click through and you’ll be on the Class Detail page. Scroll down that page to the Class Availability section, and you’ll see a breakdown of seats: how many were reserved for different groups and who those groups were, how many were open to anyone, and for each group how many of the seats have been taken and how many are left. In the Reserved Seats column, the abbreviated name of the reserve group has hover text that explains it more clearly.
Below this in the Notes section on the same page there may be a note explaining when reserved seats will be released.
If the course has recitation sections, another possible problem is that there are seats open in some recitations, but not the one you chose. If you’re willing to make a different recitation choice in order to get into the class, look at which recitations are open and try swapping to one of them. If you see another open recitation that you’d be willing to take, but can’t change your request on ConnectCarolina without losing your place on the waitlist, contact Lori Harris for help (include your PID).
Also, our First-Year Seminar classes don’t have waitlists; this is a universal First-Year Seminar policy.
Alternatively, it could be too early–remember you can’t waitlist during the first wave of registration.
For classes where we do this, the only way to try to get in is to come to the class itself, which you are welcome to do.
All of our non-FYS culture courses have seats reserved for DAMES majors. If our majors don’t use all those seats, we’ll release them for others, and they’ll go first to the people (if any) on the waitlist. So waitlisting is a great plan. There should be a note on the class telling you when we plan to release any extra seats.
Secondly, come to the first day of the class (if the class is remote, see below). The instructor may or may not have room or be willing to take extra people, but you are welcome to show up and ask.
If you are asking to get into a full section while there are still open sections, we’ll only consider granting such a request if you genuinely have a demonstrable conflict with another class. Also, such requests will not be considered at all until the term actually starts.
(FLAS recipients, if you need help getting into a language class, email Lori Harris with your PID, enrollment request, and which center your FLAS is from. Act early for maximum choice of sections.)
Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi-Urdu, Persian, and Turkish 101 classes have no restrictions.
Exceptions to that rule: Chinese above 408 or 313, and Japanese above 306. At these levels, we’ll accommodate everyone we possibly can, and there’s usually room for all, but if demand exceeds supply, our majors will have priority.