Seat availability can be viewed by expanding section information in class search (click > on left-hand side). Under the Availability heading you can see the class status, the number of seats open, and the number of Wait List Seats open. If the Wait List Open field is showing as 0/0 the section does not have a wait list. If there is no waitlist option available and the section is closed, then you can contact the department with any questions about enrolling for the section.
Students may waitlist a class via my.ÃÛÌÒ½´when the Waitlist If Class Full box on the Add Classes page is checked, the class has a waitlist and/or space on the waitlist, and there are either no available seats or available seats are restricted. When the Waitlist If Class Full box is checked, and the transaction is submitted, students who are successfully added to a waitlist will see a message under Enrollment Results which includes the Waitlist Position number. This number is updated each time the waitlist process is run, and is also accessible by clicking on the Enrollment section in your Dashboard sidebar, and selecting View Wait List. Additional information about adding waitlisted sections can be found at my.ÃÛÌÒ½´Student Essentials – Enrolling in Classes.
Students can waitlist multiple sections of the same course, but cannot choose their section preference. The waitlist process will enroll the student in the section that has the first available seat.
Once enrolled in one of the class sections, students will be automatically dropped for the other waitlisted sections for that course.
If students are already enrolled in another section of a course they want to waitlist, the SWAP (Drop if Enroll) feature should be used to enroll and waitlist for the closed section.
When seats become available in a section that has a waitlist, the class remains closed until a process runs that automatically enrolls students from the waitlist. The class stays closed until the process attempts to enroll any waiting students.
The waitlist process attempts to enroll students based on waitlist position number. If a student does not meet the criteria to enroll in the class, the process will skip that student and attempt to enroll the next student on the list. If the waitlist is unable to enroll any of the students who are on the waitlist, the class will open and other, non-waitlisted students will be able to enroll for the open seats. Please see the question, "What would prevent me from being auto-enrolled from the waitlist?" for additional information.
Students who were on the waitlist and were not enrolled will maintain their position on the waitlist. Students will have an opportunity to be auto-enrolled the next time a seat is made available, if they resolve the issue that prevented them from being auto-enrolled previously.
If there are no students on the waitlist, the class will open as usual whenever seats are available.
Students on the waitlist are not guaranteed enrollment in the waitlisted class. Successful enrollment depends on space availability and meeting class requirements.
The waitlist process runs each business day on the hour beginning at 9am and ending at 5pm. The process begins running on the first day of Continuing Enrollment, and continues through the Add/Drop period.
The number of waitlist seats are determined by the departments. You can view the number of available waitlist seats by using the Class Search in my.SMU, and expanding the section information.
Students cannot get on a waitlist until their enrollment appointment or open enrollment has begun.
Students may add themselves to the waitlist through the fourth day of classes during Fall/Spring enrollment, and through the first day of classes during Summer enrollment, and through the day before the last day to enroll for Jan/May.
The waitlist process will run through the Add/Drop period.
The waitlist will be purged on the sixth class day during Fall/Spring, and the second class day during Summer, and the day after the last day to enroll for Jan/May. This process removes all remaining students from the waitlist and waitlisted classes will no longer appear on student schedules.
Email notification will be sent to students who are successfully moved from Wait List to Enrollment in a waitlisted class section. In accordance with University Policy, the email notification will be sent to the student’s campus email address only.
There is no notification sent to students who do not move from the waitlist due to schedule conflicts and/or not meeting class requirements.
- Requisites for the class are not met
- Department/Instructor Consent is required
- Negative service indicators (enrollment holds)
- Enrollment appointment has not arrived
- Last day to waitlist has passed
- Maximum number of waitlist hours has been reached (Fall/Spring/Summer - 6 hours; Jan/May - 3 hours)
- Already enrolled in that class section
- Already waitlisted for the class section
- Waitlist is at capacity
- Open seats are restricted, and the student doesn’t meet the restriction criteria
- Adding the waitlisted class will exceed the maximum number of units for which a student can be enrolled
- Waitlisted section has a time conflict with another class section that the student is already enrolled for
- Student is enrolled in another section of the same class, and did not use the SWAP function when adding themselves to the waitlist.
Students should use the SWAP function to swap the section that they are currently enrolled in with the section that they would like to waitlist, if the preference is to be enrolled in the waitlisted section if space becomes available.
If students ADD themselves to the waitlist for a different section of the same class (instead of using the SWAP function), then they must be dropped from the section in which they are enrolled before they will be moved from the waitlist. Please contact the Registrar’s Office (registrar@smu.edu) for assistance.
If students are unable to be enrolled by the waitlist process, they will be skipped, and the system will attempt to enroll the next eligible student on the waitlist. The skipped student will remain on the waitlist.
If students are already enrolled in another section of the class for which they want to waitlist, SWAP should be used. If students use the ADD enrollment function to get on a waitlist for a different section of the same class, they must DROP the section in which they are enrolled before they will be moved from the waitlist.
Students may also want to use SWAP if there is a known time conflict between an already enrolled section, and the section that they want to waitlist. If students use the ADD enrollment function, they will not be auto-enrolled into the waitlisted class section until they DROP the class that is conflicting.
Additional information about swapping waitlisted sections can be found at my.ÃÛÌÒ½´Student Essentials – Enrolling in Classes.
Students can verify if they have successfully used the SWAP function (drop if enroll) by navigating to the Drop Classes page in my.SMU. If the SWAP function was used, the class that will be dropped if the student is successfully enrolled from the waitlist will appear on the page with a red icon in the status column. Hovering over the icon will show the class number of the waitlisted section. If the student did not use the SWAP function, no information about the Drop if Enrolled section will appear on the Drop Classes page. Additional details can be found at my.ÃÛÌÒ½´Student Essentials – Enrolling in Classes under the Waitlisting a Course heading.
If students already have a class in their shopping cart and did not select the “Waitlist if class full” checkbox, they can edit their shopping cart to update the selected waitlist options. Additional details about editing shopping carts can be found at my.ÃÛÌÒ½´Student Essentials – Enrolling in Classes under the Edit Enrollment Options Using Shopping Cart heading.
Students can drop a waitlist class section by using the DROP function in self-service enrollment. If a student is enrolled in another section of the same class that they want to drop, please contact the Registrar’s office for assistance. Additional information about dropping waitlisted sections can be found at my.ÃÛÌÒ½´Student Essentials – Enrolling in Classes.
Students are not able to waitlist more than 6 hours for Fall/Spring/Summer (5 hours for Jan/May), and cannot exceed the maximum unit load of 18 hours in Fall/Spring, 14 hours in Summer, and 5 hours in Jan/May. The maximum unit load is a student's enrolled hours. Waitlisted units do not count toward the student's enrolled hours for a term, except for Jan and May terms.
If a section has restricted seats, students who do not meet the restriction can add themselves to the waitlist for the class. Students will only be auto-enrolled by the waitlist process if the seat that opens is unrestricted.
The self-service enrollment process does not check for a time conflict whenever a student adds themselves to a waitlist. Whenever the waitlist process runs, the system will not be able to enroll the student in the waitlisted section if a time conflict exists. The student would need to drop the conflicting section in order to be moved off of the waitlist.
Alternatively, the student should use the SWAP function when first adding themselves to a waitlist for a section that conflicts with a previously enrolled section. That way, if a seat opens up in the waitlisted section, the student will automatically be dropped from the conflicting section.
Additional information about swapping waitlisted sections can be found at my.ÃÛÌÒ½´Student Essentials – Enrolling in Classes.
Students should use the SWAP function to swap a section that they are currently enrolled in with the section that they would like to waitlist, if the preference is to be moved out of the enrolled section and moved into the waitlisted section if space becomes available. If the ADD enrollment function is used instead, the system will attempt to enroll the student in the waitlisted section without swapping the class with another enrolled section. If a student used the ADD enrollment function, but intended to use the SWAP enrollment function, the student must drop themselves from the waitlisted class, and then add themselves to the waitlist again using the SWAP enrollment function. The student’s original waitlist position will not be retained.
The Class Roster page will list all of the students that are on a waitlist for a section, as well as their waitlist position number. You will need to change the roster view from Enrollment to Waiting in order to see the students who are on the waitlist.
To see if an individual student is on a waitlist, you can use any of the following pages – Enrollment Summary, Study List, and Advisee Class Schedule.
Students are not able to see who is on a waitlist for class. They are able to view their own waitlisted class sections by viewing their class schedule in my.SMU.
Department schedulers can add a waitlist to regular sections by entering the number of waitlist seats desired into the Wait List Capacity field on the Enrollment Cntrl tab of the Schedule of Classes set-up page. Make sure the Auto Enroll from Wait List checkbox, also found on the Enrollment Cntrl tab, is checked.
Please notify the Associate Registrar for Curriculum & Scheduling if adding waitlist seats to combined sections as additional set-up is necessary.