Choosing Classes

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Penn has a lot of courses to offer — over 2,000 just in the College of Arts & Sciences! The sheer number of classes you can take makes it sound difficult to map out your own path toward graduation, but there are tools you can utilize to make this process smooth and stress-free!

  1. Advance Registration Period: For around 2 weeks prior to the semester you are trying to register classes for, students request courses during the Advance Registration period. At this time, you can get a holistic overview of classes, their syllabus, schedule, and what requirements they fulfill (ex: foundational approaches) when you log in to Path@Penn, the online registration system. It is important to rank smaller and harder-to-get-into classes higher than larger lectures. For example, I ranked an ASAM class with a capacity of 40 students that fulfills the “Cultural Diversity in the US” foundational requirement higher than my Criminology elective which seats 150 students. In addition, if there is a recitation that corresponds to a lecture, you must add both to your course cart to register for them. For incoming first-year students, the Advance Registration period takes place over the summer before they arrive.

  2. Penn Course Review: Having a hard time choosing which classes are right for you? You can easily use the Penn Course Review tool (created by Penn Labs, a student-run org) to review previous students’ opinions on the course and its professor! I personally recommend using this website to look at a course’s difficulty to plan a manageable workload for the semester.

  3. Penn Course Alert: After you receive your schedules about a week or two after Advance Registration, there is still ample time to adjust your classes. Also made by Penn Labs, Penn Course Alert is a tool that sends notifications through text or email if a certain class opens or closes. Since there are many popular classes that fill up quite quickly, it is crucial to sign up for this alert system if you are trying to register for a class that is already filled up!

  4. Add/Drop Period: Even if the semester has already started, there is still enough time to change your classes. Penn students can visit classes they are interested in and add/drop courses using Path@Penn before finalizing their schedules. I regard this as the trial period, where for a couple of weeks I can make sure that the courses I registered for are a good fit for me, and add classes that I find interesting. Oftentimes, professors will have midterms and grade them before the deadline to drop classes, which makes it easier for students to see how they are doing in a particular class!

  5. Withdrawal and Pass/Fail Option: Finally, if you have missed the drop deadline, you may ask to withdraw from a course, but this should be a carefully-made decision as there will be a “W” marking on the transcript. College Students can also change their grade type until a certain deadline to a letter grade or pass/fail, but it is limited to courses that are purely electives (classes that do not count towards major, minor, or other requirements).

Check out the College’s website for more information! 

- Rachel L.