Sydney Scott is a third-year undergraduate at Southeastern Louisiana University. She shares practical advice, inspiration, and tips for high school and college students using her unique brand of candor and humor.
Academic planning: sounds thrilling, right?!
….crickets
I know. “Academic Planning” sounds like something that would’ve put me to sleep in my 9:30 a.m. advisory class that I had to take as a college freshman. (On a very real note, those are some of the best naps I’ve ever taken in my life, but don’t tell any respectable adult that I told you that.) While “Academic Planning” sounds like a topic that may lull you to sleep, too, it’s one that has ultimately put me on track to graduate a year early from college.
So what is academic planning?
I’d define academic planning as the planning you do in preparation for scheduling classes in college. Planning for classes in college is a different ballgame from what you were used to in high school. In high school, scheduling probably went something like this: you got to choose your electives, or maybe even what type of math or science you wanted to take. You definitely couldn’t choose how many days of the week you wanted to go to school, or if you wanted morning or evening classes. Ultimately, your schedule rested in the hands of counselors or school staff who were in charge of scheduling.
In college, you can usually choose exactly what classes you want to take and at what times you want to take them. You can even see who teaches the course, if that is a detail that matters to you! College requires you to plan for the semester ahead by looking at your course sheet and determining what your next steps should be. Before we dive into the topic of planning though, let me give some preface in how I ended up here:
If you know me, you know I am annoyingly competitive. I have this internal drive to beat my own goals. Sometimes if I don’t have some good ‘ole friendly competition, I’ll unintentionally become my own. This was the case when it came to scheduling classes for my freshman year of college. It only took one planning session for me to realize that I could graduate early. I only had a few credits from dual enrollment classes in high school, but I realized that if I strategically scheduled my semester, I could save myself at least an extra semester of college. All it took was a little planning to coordinate my schedule to put me on the path to graduate early.
Don’t care about graduating early? Academic planning can help you in other ways, too.
There’s this cycle I see far too often among fellow college students: they sign up for classes they aren’t ready for, overwhelm themselves with work, drop the class out of frustration, and guess what happens the next semester? They have to take it again, which is doubly frustrating as well as costly! Making an academic plan by strategizing what classes you plan take in advance can help you avoid this cycle. College is expensive, and no student has the time or desire to take a class over and over again. Academic planning can save you from wasting time, and at the end of the day, money.
So should I meet with an advisor?
You definitely should meet with an advisor if one at your school is available to you. Some colleges even require that you meet with an advisor at certain times of the school year. Advisors know the available class options better than anyone else, and they will be able to help you navigate your course load. If you have a goal, tell them, They can help point you in the right direction. Advisors can also offer some helpful insight into the difficulty of classes, or the prerequisites required to take certain courses. Even if you have a knack for planning, popping into your advisor’s office once or twice can help you form a relationship with them, which is helpful if something ever comes up or if you have any doubts.
Enough talking about the benefits of academic planning! Let’s get onto the actual planning part! I put together a list of nine tips that roughly outline my tried and true academic planning process.
They are:
Access the course sheet for your major.
Meet your requirements.
Start with the easy stuff – the credits you may have already earned.
Schedule the basics first.
Take classes when you are ready for them, and not before.
Give yourself a balance of easy and difficult courses.
Consider if online courses are right for your studying style.
Have backup options.
Follow through on your plan.
(1) To start...Access the course sheet for your major.
The first thing you’ll want to do when planning for the semester(s) ahead is to print out a course sheet specific to your major. You can usually find these by going to the home screen of your university’s website and finding an “academics” tab. If you have trouble finding it, most schools have a search bar where you can easily type in “(your major) course sheet.” Once you’ve located this sheet, hang on to it. This sheet is essentially your checklist for graduation. It will list each class you’ll have to take in order to obtain your degree, along with any special notes like which classes are only available to upperclassmen, that that may require prerequisites or certain letter grades, or those that are only available during certain semesters. For example, I know at SLU there are many classes that are only available in the Fall. Knowing this prior to planning was helpful to me,
(2) The Ultimate Scheduling Rule: Meet your requirements!
Of all of the steps to academic planning, this is by far the most important one. Make sure you are meeting all of your hour requirements! Does your university require freshmen to take 18 hours their first semester? Are you in any scholarship programs that require a certain number of hours to be taken each year? For example, if you are a recipient of the TOPS scholarship and want to continue qualifying for it, you must complete at least 24 hours per year and those must be split into 12 hours per semester of classes. The same applies to recipients of Pell grants and student aid (although some schools may have varying criteria for their in-house aid recipients). Don’t lose free money by not meeting scheduling requirements!
(3) Start with the easy credits that you’ve already earned.
Once you have your course sheet handy, begin with the easy stuff! Did you take any Dual Enrollment classes in high school, or any other courses with transferable credit? Did you test out of any general education classes because of your ACT or SAT scores? This also may be a good time to meet with your advisor; they can tell you your university’s equivalent to other credit you may have obtained. For example, LSU’s pre-calculus course is called “Algebra 1021, but at SLU, that same class is “Math 151.’ Go ahead and check off any courses that you know you already have credit for.
(4) Schedule the basics first.
This may sound obvious, but with all of the newfound scheduling freedom you’ll have when you start college, you may find yourself wanting to skip some general education classes. You know the ones -- Biology, Algebra, English 101… didn’t we just do this in high school? It’s tempting to avoid taking them, but don’t fall into that trap! Schedule your first few semesters by knocking out all of your general ed classes. This will lay the foundation for all of your classes down the road. Most of these classes will serve as prerequisites for higher-level courses anyway, so it’s a good time to get them done.
Speaking of prerequisites, make sure you get those done, too. Take a look at your higher-level classes and see if those will require you to have a certain number of hours before you register for them. This can save you frustration from planning a semester of classes just to find out they aren’t available to you yet!
Pro Tip: don’t wait to take the general ed classes you struggled with in high school. I avoided taking statistics until my second semester of freshman year because I was so tired of math classes. By the time I started that class, I hadn’t been in a math class in almost a year, so I’d forgotten a lot of the knowledge I’d learned in high school, and as a result, I didn’t do as well as I would have liked in the class. Schedule your “basic” classes first! You’ll be glad you did.
(5) Take classes when you are ready for them, and not before.
On the opposite end of the spectrum of “waiting too long” to take classes is “not waiting long enough.” This is another misstep I see students often take when planning their classes. Don’t feel like you’re ready to take on that Brit Lit class quite yet and wanting to get another English course under your belt? Work it into the next semester! This can ultimately prevent you from struggling with a class you weren’t ready for. Plus, you probably won’t do as well if you aren’t in the right headspace going in.
(6) Balance your course load by difficulty.
This is the part of the process that’s really subjective, but that’s where the freedom to schedule classes as you please comes in handy. Make sure you don’t schedule too many difficult classes in a single semester. I made that mistake in my second semester of college. I’m not someone who naturally excels in STEM classes. That sort of material doesn’t come easy to me, and I have to study a lot harder for those classes than, say, an accounting or sociology class. So when I took statistics, ecology, space science, and a 200-level psychology class all at once, I found myself overwhelmed. Space out the classes you know will be a challenge for you and don’t make the same mistake I did. Use academic planning to alleviate too much stress from falling on you at once.
(7) Consider if online classes are for you.
Now’s also a good time to talk about the online class vs. in-person class debate. Are you a “self-starter”? Do you do well studying alone? Online classes can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the ability to complete your coursework on your own time will free up your schedule a bit and allow you flexibility. On the other hand, if you aren’t a super vigilant planner, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of individual study that you’ll need to do in an online course. If you think taking an online class will end up with you procrastinating, and thus doing worse in the class, take the in-person option.
(8) Have backup options.
Sometimes, a class you really want to take will fil up before you even get a chance to register. It’s so frustrating. Be a bit flexible and have a backup option or two in your back pocket, just in case.
You can also decrease the chances of this happening to you by taking advantage of your institution’s priority registration process. Most schools have different requirements, but overall, priority registration is a great way to improve your chances of securing those classes you want to take, when you want to take them.
If there’s a class that has filled up that you were really hoping to get done, look into summer or winter-interim classes. These classes are often discounted and run 4 to 8 weeks depending on the time of year. There are even financial aid options for summer students. I took two economics courses and a business law class through BPCC last summer, and it really helped me get ahead this year. Take advantage of summer or winter break classes if it’ll benefit your studies.
(9) Follow through on your plan.
This one sounds easy, but can be difficult when putting it into action. Remember that you planned for a reason - so that you’d have a great semester. Do your best in the classes you strategically planned for. Seek help if you need it. Don’t drop or withdraw from a class unless you absolutely must, and don’t consider doing well in the class as optional.
The world of academic planning and scheduling can be overwhelming if you don’t take it slow and steady. Make a plan, and then stick to it! You’ll be happier (and more stress-free!) in the long run.
To wrap up: Academic planning sounds boring, but it’s super important in the grand scheme of things. It can prevent you from wasting time in classes that you don’t need in order to graduate, and it can even help you graduate early! And the best part? It can help you save money on tuition, books, and fees that you might have paid otherwise.
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