UT San Antonio’s registration for the fall 2026 semester opened on March 30 at 7 a.m. for only priority-level students. After priority students come graduate students, and for everyone else, it is survival of the fittest. Good luck to those who missed their designated time.
Students are forced to prepare for registration days to weeks in advance just to ensure they are ready when the clock strikes 7 a.m., taking no chances of missing a class they have been trying to get into since freshman year. No one is prepared for the level of difficulty it takes to get into a class until it is too late, and registration is open to everyone.
Registration for any STEM student is just as stressful as “The Hunger Games.” Pre-med students sit and wait for class selection to open, only to see that all the classes they need have disappeared within the first few days; students are left running to academic advisors, hoping an override can be done. Usually, there is nothing that can be done.
Pre-med students, in particular, are placed on a track that has semester-specific courses. Missing any course could force a student to graduate a semester late. To address this problem, advisors have started to discourage biology students from joining the pre-medical track because it pushes too many students back on graduating on time.
Course selection is supposed to be painless, but the difficulty of selecting necessary courses makes the process gruelingly tiresome. This applies to all students, not just STEM.
For deciding what classes to take, DegreeWorks is a vital tool that lays out all the courses necessary in order to graduate. This clashes with the registration site because not all courses on DegreeWorks can be put into a schedule even if DegreeWorks says it is open for selection. This disjunction leads to desperate meetings with academic advisors, who have to override the system for students to get put in classes.
If students somehow pass the obstacle course that is finding correct classes on the registration site, they are now met with the oh-so-evil waitlist. Once on the waitlist, students must monitor their Outlook email like their lives depend on it. Students then have a 24-hour timeframe to accept an open seat before it is obtained by another desperate peer.
Registering at UT San Antonio is not for the faint of heart. Keep friends close and 7 a.m. alarms closer or say goodbye to the chance of getting into any important classes next semester. May the registration be ever in your favor.
