Registration Information & Tools

You can jump to the following sections:

Pick your courses
Plan your course timetable
Survive Workday

FAQ

Registration Times: When will I know, how is this calculated, and where can I find it?

You will know around 1-2 week(s) before the registration date. Your registration date will be with other people in your year group, usually in this order:

Graduate students
Fourth and fifth-year students and diploma programs
First-year students
Third-year students
Second-year students
Visiting, Unclassified, and Access Studies students

The method for how UBC calculates your registration day and time has changed very recently. It now likely uses your overall GPA, among over factors. You will get an email with your registration time, and you can confirm the details on Workday.

See the following links:

How does Workday handle prerequisites?

In the past, some courses were set up with 'soft' prerequisites, where students could register for a course but would receive an email from the department once they check the list.

This is no longer the case for most courses, and so Workday will NOT let you register if it thinks you do not meet the prerequisites. This can happen if:

You took the course at another school (INCLUDING UBC Okanagan)
You have a pre-arranged exemption with the department

What you should do:

Contact your department's advising office as soon as you notice the problem, and send all relevant details about your issue (ex. what course, what prerequisite is being met, and how). If successful, the department may do some (or none!) of the following:

before your registration date: add an override to your account so you can register
after your date: register you, or backdate your waitlist position to an earlier date

If the course section is full, what should I do?

In the past, it was possible to 'jump the waitlist' and register for a course, if you noticed that there was a spot open. Students could use monitoring services to do this more easily. This is no longer the case.

Why was this possible?: In the SSC, "waitlist" sections were actually just regular sections that were titled "waitlist". Someone would need to periodically go in and move students from the waitlist into the actual section.

Workday has an actual waitlist system:

You will automatically be put in the waitlist if the registration fails.
When a spot opens up, it will offer it to the first waitlisted student that meets the seat's requirements. Seats that are restricted to a specific group (ex. a certain specialization) will be offered to the next student that meets that requirement.
After the offer, the student has 24 hours to respond, before it is offered to the next student.

Other important changes:

You can register for multiple waitlists for the same course or section type
You can register for a waitlist even if it conflicts with something else
If a course requires a secondary section (ex. lab, discussion, etc.), you MUST register for one when you register for the lecture section.

Things that are still true:

If you are near graduation and need a course to graduate, reach out to your department. They may be able to help.
If you are unable to register and classes are starting, show up to the first few lectures. Sometimes the instructor will have special policies for students on the waitlist, and students that show up generally get priority.

1. Pick your courses

Tools that help you pick your courses, find grade distributions, etc.

UBCFinder.com

A resource that effectively allows you to filter and sort through a list of UBC courses by several parameters such as average and faculties. Also includes a list of profs with similar sort functionality as well as course details pages that show detailed grade distributions. Each course details section includes a list of prerequisites and professors that have taught the selected course along with the average of each prof.

Course SelectionCoursesAverageProfessorsPlanningPrerequisites

UBCGrades.com

This site lets you see past grade distributions for courses. You can use it to judge difficulty, or see how grades changed between each sections or year.

Course SelectionCourse DifficultyGPA

RateMyProf

Some courses will specify who is teaching, and this tool lets you read past reviews.

Course SelectionCourse DifficultyInstructors

UBC Profs Search

Shows what courses (and UBCGrades links to those courses) that a prof has taught in the past. Useful for finding the past grade distributions or research interests of a certain prof.

Course SelectionCourse DifficultyInstructors

Outdated / Unavailable Tools

UBC Pair

The Pair tool is likely being migrated, and the link on the website is currently broken. This page will be updated when/if the new page becomes accessible.

Please note: The Grades Distribution Report has moved to Enterprise Data Governance.
source

Outdated tools

Pre-Req Tree
Slacknotes
UBC Profs: Offered information on grading variance between profs. (ubc-profs-reborn.herokuapp.com)
https://ubcexplorer.io/

2. Plan your course timetable

These are tools to help you plan out your course schedule for future terms, once you know what courses you want to take.

UBCScheduler

This is the 'only student-developed app that has permission to access the UBC course database, ensuring the information is accurate and up-to-date'. It includes a schedule generator, drag and drop calendar, schedule type (late start, days off, etc), etc. Funded by the AMS Student Initiatives Fund and UBC eHub.

Course PlanningScheduling

Outdated Tools

Outdated tools

ubcscheduler.github.io
yichen's tool (yichen.dev/UBCScheduler)
HFaran's tool (github.com/hfaran/ubc-timetabler)
ChenVictor's tool (github.com/chenvictor/CourseScheduler/releases)
UBC Schedule Optimizer (ubc-schedule-optimizer.herokuapp.com)

3. Survive Workday

These tools make it easier to use Workday.

Workday-Hide-Average

This browser extension will hide your average until you hover over it, so taht you feel more comfortable opening Workday around other people.

Survive WorkdayInterface Improvement

Workday Calendar Tool

This browser extension will let you view how courses fit into your schedule as you browse the course list. It does not create a worklist for you, so be sure to create that separately.

Survive WorkdayAdditional Functionality

Custom Workday Courselist

This extension enhances Workday's messy course search list by compacting and categorizing courses, as well as displaying course descriptions, averages, instructors, and more through an intuitive layout on the same page.

Survive WorkdayInterface Improvement