Managing Your Lottery

During pre-registration, although we display and record your class enrollment limit, an unlimited number of students are allowed to preregister for it. No priority is given to when a student preregisters for a course. After preregistration concludes, the Registrar's Office contacts faculty members whose class has over-enrolled. The faculty member has two options:

• Option 1: Close the course, keep all the students who preregistered
• Option 2: Close the course, lottery the class

Some faculty who are only a few students over their limit (fewer than five) might choose to close their class to further enrollment, but keep all the preregistered students knowing that students shift their schedules in the first week of the semester. If you choose this option, you cannot hold a lottery on the first week of classes, except if additional seats open up. In this case, all the preregistered students must be admitted to the class and a lottery for the remaining seats can be held among those students who "shopped the class" on the first day.

If the faculty member decides to lottery their course, they may choose to lottery the course and keep a waitlist or simply drop the additional students. The waitlist may be as short or long as the faculty member likes. Students who are waitlisted should be given a permission number to add the course when a seat opens up.

The Registrar's Office distributes rosters showing student information, including prerequisites, class year, and major/minors for information while running the lottery. The Registar's Office can automatically run your class lottery using the criteria submitted during course planning. If you preferred, lottery results can also be entered by the faculty member using the STAR Lottery system in BiONiC or the Registrar's Office is more than happy to run the lottery for the faculty member.

The lottery may be held according to almost any criteria the faculty member wants. Some of these criteria include:

• Prerequisites*
• Class Year
• Major/ Minor in department
• Previous course work
• Completely Random

*Pre and co-requisites are system enforced. Students will not be allowed to preregister unless they have the proper course preparation.

There are also a few criteria that can't be used for a lottery:

• Bryn Mawr students cannot be favored over Haverford students
• Swarthmore students are not to be included in the lottery
• The order the students preregistered in during preregistration (we don't track or provide this information)

After the lottery has been held, the Registrar's Office posts the lottery results on the website for students to see. Students that are dropped from the course have their registrations dropped for them. Students who were put on the waitlist are put into waitlisted status. Students you wish to add from your waitlist to your class should be given a permission number to register. Waitlists are ordered and students should be admitted in order of their position on the waitlist.

Once the lottery is posted, you must follow your lottery when classes begin. Any student on the "enrolled" list on the lottery page, must be granted admission into the class provided they come to the first class. Waitlisted students have next priority if spaces open up. If you still have available seats on the first day of classes, a secondary lottery can be held among those students who were shopping the class. Secondary lotteries must be held prior to the second class meeting. In all these situations, if a student does not show up on the first day of class, they forfeit their seat in the class even if they still appear on your roster.