The Class of 2026 woke up bright and early at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 20 to enroll in courses for the fall 2023 semester on TigerHub, Princeton’s course enrollment platform. First-years quickly encountered issues, however, when the website crashed for many students and some alleged that they couldn’t enroll until at least 15 minutes after enrollment opened.
The Class of 2026 is the largest class to ever attend Princeton, and represents the first step in the University’s planned four-year expansion of the undergraduate student body. In fall 2022, despite the increase in the student body, roughly the same number of undergraduate classes were offered as recent semesters. Though many classes later expanded the number of available student seats, many introductory classes, such as CHM 201: General Chemistry I and PHY 103: General Physics I exceeded their average enrollment numbers.
Despite this, in a statement to The Daily Princetonian, University Spokesperson Ahmad Rizvi wrote that “the increased class size was factored into this year's [TigerHub] stress testing and did not contribute to the issue.”
He explained that a “technical problem” slowed the registration process in the morning, which led to some students receiving error messages.
“The problem was resolved quickly and all but 50 Class of 2026 students had registered by 8:15 a.m,” Rizvi wrote.
Although students were eventually able to enroll in their courses, the ‘Prince’ found that some popular and core courses were difficult to get into, which caused frustration for some members of the Class of 2026.
Myrah Charles ’26 spoke with the ‘Prince’ about how she was unable to join CWR 203: Creative Writing (Fiction).
Though creative writing (CWR) courses have been met with higher demand for a limited number of seats following the program dropping the application requirement for introductory CWR courses last spring, for Charles, missing out on a spot in one of the program’s coveted classes created uncertainty.
“It is what it is,” Charles said.
The requirements for earning a Creative Writing certificate include taking two 200- level classes by the end of sophomore year and two 300- level courses by the end of junior year, however the program states that in “unusual circumstances,” a portion of this requirement can be waived.
In spite of Charles’s current frustration with course registration, she remains optimistic that the Creative Writing program can accommodate students who don’t meet all the prerequisites prior to their junior year.
“I can’t see them denying a person the opportunity to get the certificate with the current system we have now,” Charles added.
According to TigerSnatch, a student-created app created that allows students to receive email and text notifications when a spot opens in a full course, CWR 203 is currently the third most subscribed course. CWR 201: Creative Writing (Poetry) closely follows as the sixth most subscribed course. Toggling “subscribe” on a course activates email and text notifications.
ORF 309/EGR 309/MAT 380: Probability and Stochastic Systems, a required course for Operations Research and Financial Engineering majors, is the seventh most subscribed course For the fall 2023 semester, there are currently 1,041 subscribed users on TigerSnatch with 3,322 subscriptions. 227 courses have subscriptions.
SPI 298: Introduction to Public Policy, Authority, Incentive, and Persuasion is a required course for School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) majors that must be taken either in the fall of sophomore or junior year; all spots were filled quickly, leaving many students uncertain.
“I spent the morning constantly checking TigerSnatch with concern, which interrupted my ability to focus during classes today,” Rebecca Cunningham ’26 said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
Cunningham is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince’.
Hours later, citing enrollment demand, more spots were opened up for students to join the course.
However, following the course’s increase in capacity, students who were still unable to enroll in the course received a message from Joanna Kovac, the academic coordinator of SPIA. Kovac notified students that they were on a waiting list, and that the course’s capacity may increase in the near future. Kovac additionally advised students to enroll in the course if seats become available during the May 1-5 add/drop period, and that the course will be available to prospective SPIA majors when they are juniors if they do not have the opportunity to take the course this fall.
First-years also took to Fizz, a private anonymous discussion app, to share their opinions on the TigerHub crash. Over 1,000 students upvoted a post that said “It should be a crime that the number one school in the country still uses TigerHub.”
Lia Opperman / The Daily Princetonian
Lia Opperman / The Daily Princetonian
Rizvi explained that there is “extensive preparation and testing” performed before each course registration cycle.
“We will investigate improving the course registration performance in the future to reduce any potential slow-downs,” Rizvi wrote.
Justus Wilhoit is an assistant news editor for the ‘Prince.’
Lia Opperman is an associate news editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Correction: This article has been updated to remove a misleading statistic about texts sent by TigerSnatch.
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