Registration is approaching quickly. Below are the 20 most frequent TEAM registration mistakes. Please familiarize yourself with these and avoid them! (These are not listed in any particular order.)
1. Delaying Blinn registration and trying to do it when registering for A&M courses (several weeks later). If you do not register for Blinn courses quickly, you will either not get the best possible schedule, or may not even get the courses you need. Plan ahead and meet with your academic advisor BEFORE Blinn registration begins.
2. Failure to seek advising until shortly before A&M registration begins. The wait to meet with an advisor can exceed two hours just prior to the start of registration. Students are often turned away because the students signed in ahead of them will monopolize the advisors until the end of the workday. Schedule an appointment with a TAP academic advisor far in advance. The advice you receive in February (for Summer/Fall registration) or September (for Spring registration) is exactly the same advice you would receive in April or November, but without the wait!
3. Meeting with a Blinn advisor to be advised about Blinn courses, then meeting with a TAP advisor to be advised about A&M courses. This is inefficient–you only need to meet with one advisor. Planning your combined schedule should be a holistic process. Determine the courses you still need for your major* without regard for where you will take them. Next, assemble a “wish list” of the most appropriate courses, including some back-up choices in case your top choices are unavailable. Take the list with you when you meet with an advisor. Then decide which course(s) you should take at A&M (your “best” subjects). Take the other courses at Blinn. Your best grades need to be at A&M because entry to your intended major will be based on your A&M GPA.
4. Forgetting to check for registration holds in advance, only to discover a hold when attempting [unsuccessfully] to register. To check for A&M registration holds, logon to Howdy / My Record / Grades and Transcripts / holds. To check for Blinn registration holds, logon to MyBLINN / My Records / Holds. Note: Avoid a registration hold at A&M by submitting the new, signed TEAM contract to TAP (if you have not previously done so).
5. Not checking in advance to determine when registration will occur. Blinn Registration begins for all students on April 2 at 9:00 a.m. Be ready! Your A&M registration is assigned individually. Check Howdy / My Record / Registration / Registration Time Assignment–CS for your assigned registration time. Registration at A&M for most freshmen falls between April 18th and 20th.
6. Ignoring advice to complete a math or science series at the same school. You should plan to take all courses in a series at the same school to ensure preparedness and continuity. Even though courses may officially be equivalent between the two schools, they are never exactly the same due to different professors, textbooks, and some content. For example, if you start with Chemistry I at Blinn, take Chemistry II at Blinn. Another issue can occur if you attempt to change campuses mid-sequence. If you are taking Chemistry I at Blinn you will be unable to register for Chemistry II at A&M unless you specifically sent a Blinn transcript to A&M that lists Chemistry I as “in progress.” Otherwise, Howdy does not sense that you are satisfying the prerequisite for Chemistry II and your attempt to register for it will fail. Conversely, if you are taking Chemistry I at A&M and decide to take Chemistry II at Blinn, MyBLINN will not sense that you are satisfying the prerequisite for Chemistry II, and you will be unable to register for Chemistry II until your A&M transcript showing your final course grade in Chemistry I is received by Blinn.
7. Selecting A&M online courses inappropriately. The purpose of the TEAM program is to provide the four-year A&M experience for as many freshmen as possible. If your main A&M course(s) is/are online, you are not getting the A&M experience. Additionally, if students register for an online course with a 700 series section number, that course is considered “distance education.” In other words, that course is intended for students who are not in the College Station area. These students pay a large convenience fee for taking this course from a distance, but are not charged campus service fees because they are away. Such fees include use of the Student Recreation Center, campus bus service, etc. Previous TEAM students who exclusively registered for the 700 section of online courses have been denied campus services (to include use of the Student Recreation Center and participation in intramural sports) because they have not paid campus services fees. If you must take an online course, ensure it is a 599 section number. Note: For more information, see the August 29, 2017 TEAM Blog entry on this topic.
8. Registering for KINE 120 more than once. This course may only be completed for credit one time. Howdy will not prevent you from registering for KINE 120 for a second time. Students who retake it will not receive a credit hour for the course, and the grade you earn will not be included in your GPA. Repeating this course could cause you to fall short of the TEAM A&M credit hour requirement. Repeats of this course have caused a few TEAM students to fail to qualify outright for Mays Business School.
9. Believing it is likely that a friend can “hold a course for you” by registering for it. This is usually attempted for courses that fill quickly. Such attempts to reserve a space in a course usually fail. There is no way for the students who registered for the course to guarantee you will be the one to get it when they drop it. If advisors have forced any students into the course over the normal course limit, and the available seat balance is a negative number, it will not be possible for you (or anyone else) to get the course when your friend drops it. The number of available seats must be zero or a positive number or no space will become available when one student drops it.
10. Panicking if the needed courses are not available, and feeling compelled to “just register for some courses” solely for the purpose of being enrolled. Registering for courses you do not need produces only negative consequences. For example, if you receive financial aid and register for courses that do not apply toward your intended major, your financial aid eligibility will initially be denied and your eventual approval delayed. Do not register for courses you do not need.
11. Forgetting to complete the Lab Safety Acknowledgement (LSA) in Howdy before registration. Without having completed the LSA each semester, students are prevented from registering for lab courses. This causes frustration and delays, sometimes resulting in courses filling before students realize what is preventing their registration.
12. Unsuccessful registration experienced when attempting to add a course and its accompanying lab “one at a time.” Some science courses require that the lecture course and accompanying lab course be added simultaneously.
13. Failure to check the “restrictions” link to determine if a particular course, or section of a course, is limited to a specific group of students. Failure to check restrictions causes delays and frustration. Always check the restrictions link before attempting to register for each course. Be aware that some sections might not be available to you, whereas other sections of the same course might be open to you. Be thorough in checking or you might miss the chance to get into a course you need.
14. Registering for graduate courses. Graduate courses do not necessarily have restrictions in Howdy because no one thinks undergraduate students would attempt them! An excuse that never works is: “The computer let me register for it.” The prerequisite for such courses include having earned a particular bachelor degree and having been admitted into a Master or Doctorate program. Graduate course numbers usually begin with “6” instead of “1,” “2,” “3,” or “4.” Some of these past inappropriate registrations were not discovered until the semester was well underway. The students were dropped by the professors, but it was too late for students to receive refunds or replace the dropped courses with appropriate courses.
15. Forgetting to limit searches for Blinn courses to the Bryan campus. A basic MyBLINN course search produces a list of offerings at all of the Blinn College campuses. TEAM students are only able to register for courses taught at the Bryan campus. Save yourself the frustration by doing an “advance search” and specifying the Bryan campus. This will only show you the courses you are able to take.
16. Accidently registering for an A&M minimester course instead of a regular semester course, or accidently registering for a regular semester course instead of a minimester course. Unlike at Blinn, at A&M it is not possible to search for minimester courses. Available minimester courses at A&M are mixed in with regular semester courses. The only way to differentiate between minimester and regular semester courses is to look closely at the dates a course is scheduled to run.
17. Registering for ROTC courses first (for Corps of Cadets members), and then being unable to register for an academic course due to an insufficient credit hour limit. This frequent problem represents a confluence of three mistakes: (1) Failure to read TEAM email, (2) Failure to submit a request for an increase in the credit hour limit, and (3) registering for a low-demand ROTC course while the high-demand academic courses fill quickly. Always register for ROTC courses last—not many students are competing for space in ROTC courses.
18. Registering for an inappropriate TEAM schedule. TEAM policy specifies that students must be enrolled in a minimum of three credit hours, consisting of a “solid academic course.” A solid academic course is defined as a three or four credit hour course that satisfies a degree requirement. Examples of inappropriate TEAM schedules include: enrollment in only an ROTC course, enrollment in a two credit hour course (such as STLC 101) and a one credit hour course (such as KINE 199), etc. Students with inappropriate TEAM schedules violate their TEAM contract and receive a registration hold that will prevent registration at their assigned time.
19. Registering for a non-transferable Blinn course. Blinn College offers many vocational/technical training courses that are not usable at A&M. Examples include courses in the Emergency Medical Technician program, or courses used toward a real estate license. Always check with an advisor, or refer to the TAMU Transfer Course Equivalency System in Howdy, if you do not know if a Blinn course is transferable to A&M.
20. Registering for a course that was previously completed! An alarming number of students accidently retake courses for which they earned AP or dual credit. Even worse, some retake courses completed during a previous semester at A&M or Blinn. The most common scenarios for repeated courses are: (1) failure to realize a Blinn course is equivalent to a particular A&M course (or vice versa), and (2) failure to report previously earned AP/dual credits to A&M. The courses that are most likely to be erroneously repeated include: ECON 202 and 203 (these courses are numbered in the opposite sequence at A&M and Blinn), and POLS 206 and 207 (the content of these courses is similar).
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*There are three easy ways to determine the required courses for your intended major:
- Run a “What-If Degree Evaluation” in Howdy. This computer program will compare your course work against the degree requirements for your intended major. The required courses you have not completed are the ones from which you should choose for the next semester. (Your current Blinn courses will not be included in the evaluation.) Take into account those courses that will be unavailable to you due to restrictions (such as those reserved for students who are currently in the major, or those for which you have not completed prerequisites). Instructions for producing a Degree Evaluation are provided on the Transition Academic Programs (TAP) website (http://tap.tamu.edu) under the “Run Your Own Degree Evaluation” tab.
- Use the Undergraduate Catalog to view the list of course requirements for your intended major. The catalog is available online at http://catalog.tamu.edu. In turn, select the links for “Undergraduate catalog,” the college that houses your intended major, “Majors,” and finally the major itself.
- Find the one-page curriculum for your intended major (a “major pager”) on the department’s website.
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