Registering for classes can be a stressful experience, and in recent years, online tools have become a big trend in easing the pain. Many students were dismayed when the popular online registration tool MyEdu announced it would no longer service USC, but other sites and tools within the University's own system have since taken effect.
Coursicle added USC to their course library when they heard the news about MyEdu. The site is the upstart brainchild of two recent college graduates frustrated with the registration process. Co-founder Joe Puccio was inspired to start the project with the help of his friend Tara Aida after his first try registering as a student at UNC-Chapel Hill.
"I spent several hours trying to plan out my class schedule, and then when I finally went to register for my classes, I got into only one of the five I needed to take," Puccio said. "So, that night I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat."
With Aida's help, Coursicle grew into a full-service registration program at UNC-Chapel Hill and was eventually expanded to other schools.
Puccio and Aida say they've had about 500 hits from USC so far and that they average "several thousand hits a day" from students at the over 200 schools supported by their site.
They're also still adding features to the program, such as a recently-created system that allows students to see what classes their Facebook friends have taken in the past and are currently interested in.
USC's own registration system, run through my.sc.edu, has also seen renovations since the loss of MyEdu.
The University has added DegreeWorks, a system which allows students to see digitized versions of their advisement documents and detailed breakdowns of their course requirements based on major and minor.
Students also now have the option to use a schedule planner through my.sc.edu. With the planner, students can choose which courses they're interested in, and the program will generate multiple schedules based on the open sections available for those classes. They can then lock in the schedule they like best and put it in a "registration cart" that transfers the selected courses directly into the registration system.
At the end of the day, older students like fourth-year fashion marketing student Sierra Zaner who've seen registration tools come and go, advise younger students that one of the easiest ways to get organized is simply the old-fashioned way.
"I would suggest just writing it out on a piece of paper," she said. "Physically seeing it is going to be a lot easier than imagining it on a computer screen."