• Do NOT email the instructor asking them to put you into the class.  Seriously, resist that urge. You’ll just irritate people.  We are so not kidding about this.

Spring 2018 classes are now visible in SPIRE, but the information you see right now may not be final, so do NOT fill your shopping cart until a day or two before your enrollment date. Here are some other helpful tips to keep you informed and help you through the enrollment process:

• Your SPIRE enrollment date should now be visible in the ‘Enrollment Dates’ box in the lower right of your student center.  You must click the ‘details’ link to find out what time you will be able to enroll on that date. Thousands of other people will also be enrolling in classes, so you should enroll as soon as possible after that time so that you won’t miss out on any important classes.

• Your enrollment date and time are assigned by the Registrar’s office, based on your cumulative credits and expected graduation term. You may not be enrolling at the same time as your friends, so be sure to put your enrollment date and time in your calendar so you don’t miss out.  Also, please do not contact your advisor to ask why you have been assigned a specific date or time, as we have NO control over this.

• If you have not been assigned an enrollment date and time for Spring 2018, go to the Registrar’s office in 213 Whitmore to find out what you should do.  Email or phone may also work, but they will take longer.

• You are NOT required to meet with an Economics advisor before you enroll UNLESS you have received an email from your advisor instructing you to make an appointment.

• If you see the words ‘Prevents enrollment’ in the ‘Holds’ box on the right side of your student center, you had better click the ‘details’ link and find out which office (bursar, Dean of Students, Academic Dean, UHS, etc.) put the hold on and what you have to do to get the hold removed. IMPORTANT NOTE: Your advisor can only remove holds that say you must meet with an advisor; we cannot remove holds placed by anyone else.

• If you plan to attend UMass as a full-time student next semester, you must enroll in at least 12 credits to ensure that the university does not drop you to part-time.  If this happens, you will have to submit a request to change your status back to full-time and it could negatively impact your financial aid or housing.

• If you are trying to get into an Economics class, you have checked the restrictions on the course page, and you are certain you should be eligible to enroll, but SPIRE will not allow you to enroll, email your PRIMARY advisor with a description of the situation and copy and paste the error message that SPIRE gave you into the email. (Your primary major is listed in the advisor box in the bottom-right corner of your student center.)  Please note that if you have not read the course restrictions and we find that you are not eligible to enroll, you should be prepared for a somewhat snarky response.

• If you are trying to get into a class that is not in the Economics department, you must contact the department that offers that class. Your Economics advisor cannot help you with that. And before you contact that other department, you had better be sure to read the restrictions to find out if you are eligible to enroll.  If not, you may just want to check again in a couple of weeks to see if they have opened the course to other majors.

• If you decide to change your schedule after you have enrolled, remember: SWAP, DON’T DROP. Use the Swap tab to change lectures or seminars, and use your Edit tab to change discussion sections within the same class.

If you need to get caught up on requirements, you might want to take a winter or summer course. Enrollment for Winter 2018 started October 18, so there’s no need to wait any longer!  Here’s how:

• In SPIRE, go to: Main Menu>Enrollment>Summer/Wtr/Non-deg Enroll Appt
• From the Term dropdown, select the term you need (e.g. Winter 2018)
• Click the REQUEST CPE ENROLLMENT APPOINTMENT button.
• Now go back to your enrollment add tab and you will see the term you selected.
• Select the term and click Continue.
• Add classes as you would during a normal semester.

*****IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU ENROLL *****

• The winter session fits a fourteen week class into just four weeks, so you must be prepared to work very hard!
• All winter/summer classes at UMass are offered through Continuing & Professional Education (CPE) and are subject to CPE registration fees and tuition rates.
• Tuition for CPE classes can range from $390/credit to $525/credit, so be sure to open the class page in SPIRE and check the notes so you know what you’ll be paying.
• Current per-credit rates are $390 for most SBS courses, $482 for math or stats, and $525 for some Isenberg courses,  and all include a $47 registration fee, so a CPE course could cost anywhere from $1,217 to $1,622 before adding in the cost of books.
• Most CPE classes are online, but some are in-person.  Check carefully to see if your class is in-person and make sure you are willing to travel to that location during the winter or summer.
• For complete information on CPE courses, go to umass.edu/cpe/.

For those of you who finalized your schedules months ago, it might be hard to believe that some of your compatriots have not yet finished enrolling, but we keep hearing from students who need help finding those last two classes or who still haven’t been able to get into a full class even though they’ve been checking SPIRE all summer. If you are one of those students who still hasn’t finalized your class schedule, now is the time to get serious about it.  And to help you stay sane until the end of add/drop, remember the following:

• If you are hoping to get into a class that’s been full for months, just keep checking SPIRE a few times a day, because things should start opening up during the first week of school.

• If you are unable to enroll in something that you think you’re eligible for, be sure to open up the course page to find out what the specific restrictions are. You might find out you are not actually eligible for that section.

• If you are trying to get into a class that is NOT AN ECONOMICS CLASS, your Economics advisor cannot help you.  You must contact the department that offers the class. Use your google skills to find the contact info. We know you can do it!

• If the course is an Economics course that is either full or listed as “Instructor Consent”, you must contact the instructor. Your advisor may be sympathetic to your plight, but can do nothing for you except hand you a tissue to dry your tears. If the instructor wants to let you into the class, they will contact the Economics Faculty Secretary, who will then enroll you and send you a confirmation email.

• Do not wait until the second week to finalize your schedule!  Make every effort to finalize your classes in the first week, because it may be very difficult to get caught up in a class if you add it after you’ve missed a few class meetings. No sense going through all the trouble to add it if you’re just going to get a D in it.

• Be sure to double check your schedule in SPIRE to make sure you are actually enrolled in what you THINK you are enrolled in. Every semester, there are a few students who fail a class because they thought they dropped it the second week, but they never actually drop the class. Surprise! There are also people who have to fill out a bunch of paperwork for a late add because they thought they added a class, but they never clicked [Finish Enrolling]. So check it carefully and make necessary adjustments before the end of add/drop.

Classes are now visible in SPIRE, but some course information may not be finalized, so don’t worry if you see discussion sections but no lecture, or you don’t see the junior year writing classes, etc.  Start checking SPIRE around March 31 or April 1, as the information in SPIRE should be much more accurate by then.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT Fall 2017 IE Courses:  Seats in ECON 306, 394CI, 394FI, and 394LI will be available ONLY to primary Economics majors who have not yet satisfied the IE requirement. We have a backlog of students who have not yet taken an IE but need one to graduate, so we will be manually overriding students into these courses. If you do not fit this profile, please do not email instructors or advisors asking for permission to join one of these classes.

Check the prerequisites of courses before you put them into your shopping cart! You don’t want any nasty surprises on your enrollment day because you didn’t confirm ahead of time that you were eligible to enroll in a class.

If your enrollment date is after April 5, don’t start putting classes into your shopping cart yet because the classes you want may fill up.  You may just be filling your cart with broken dreams!  Wait until a day or two before your enrollment appointment to search for classes, because then you can just search on open classes.

If a class fills up before you have a chance to enroll, put it in your shopping cart and keep checking for open seats in SPIRE right up until the first day of class in the fall.  The Economics department does not keep waitlists until classes begin, but once the initial registration period is over, we remove many restrictions on classes, so you may be able to self-enroll if a seat opens up.  Please do not email the instructor or advisors asking for an override unless a seat opened, you verified that you were eligible, and you were still unable to enroll.

Have some backup classes in your shopping cart in case you don’t get into all of the classes you want.

If you are trying to get into a class that is not an Economics class, contact the department that is offering that class. Economics staff and advisors cannot override you into any classes outside of the Economics department.

If you sign up on any kind of waitlist, make sure you will not have any conflicts. If you have a time conflict or you will be over the credit limit if enrolled in the class you’re waiting for, you may not get in.  If you really want the class, get rid of the conflicts!