Summer registration begins early
Changes to dates, times to help ease Internet traffic, some say

By Alisha Brown
Staff Reporter

Students using FrogNet are receiving a jumpstart this semester on summer course enrollment.

Beginning next week students may start registering for summer sessions a week before registering for their fall courses, which is a change in procedure since the online enrollment program’s inception in May 1999.

One reason registrar Pat Miller made the date change is to decrease traffic on FrogNet.

“(Last fall), we were noticing the system was shutting down about 4 p.m. every day,” he said. “We ran all sorts of system tests. Our best guess was students were rushing to register when they finished with their morning classes.”

By allowing summer registration to begin a week earlier, the volume of students registering at any given moment will decrease, Miller said. That flood of students will be taken out of the equation during the fall registration dates.

The changes were based on numbers from fall, however, when summer enrollment was not available. But a mathematical comparison can still be made between the semesters, Miller said.

“We have 930 students set to graduate this year,” he said. “We’ll have twice as many students in the summer, but they’ll take half as many courses, which nearly evens out.”

The earlier registration dates also allow for students to know in advance which courses they will be able to take in the summer before they enroll in their classes for fall.

Being able to plan ahead — even if only by a week — gives a student a better chance of locking in his or her course selections, Miller said.

“They could see what they need and know what they have to take for fall,” he said. “We’re trying to do anything that can improve the performance of the system so that it takes less time and works better for the students.”

The service changes are being implemented immediately for summer registration times beginning Monday and fall registration times starting April 9. Individual times are listed on each student’s FrogNet account under Student Records and are decided by the number of hours completed to date, Miller said.

Times will begin an hour earlier, at 8 a.m., this semester to ease the flow of FrogNet traffic, Miller said. Allotted registration times will end at 7 p.m., although students may enroll any time after their registration time.

Alisha Brown
a.k.brown2@student.tcu.edu