August is slowly but surely creeping up on us San Diego State students. Which not only means it’s almost time to say goodbye to our care-free summers and head back to school for another year, but also it’s just about time to start stressing about registering for classes.
With the anticipation of each new semester, comes the absolute torture of registering for classes at San Diego State. For most students, if you don’t have friends who are willing to hold classes for you, you’re basically out of luck. SDSU has a system to ensure that the students who need the classes the most, get them, or so they believe. Freshmen always register first; they are given the opportunity to get the hang of using the registration system and make sure they have chosen the right classes before other students crowd the system. Then come the seniors, their choices are the most important so that they can get every class they need to graduate on time. After the seniors comes the juniors, and then finally the sophomores. Even though SDSU’s system seems reasonable, every semester ensures panic for students of every year as they begin to plan their new schedules and wonder if there will still be spots left in their wish list classes when their registration opens. But this year, a new Google Chrome application called Aztec Course Snatcher has made playing the game of getting your needed courses 10 times harder, or easier depending on how you look at it.
According to the app’s web store, “this app will display a notification and play a sound when there is a class opening in your wish list. It will also automatically add it if you have the auto add enabled.”
With the huge amount of money every student who attends SDSU has to pay for tuition, it is ridiculous that now to be able to get the classes we need to graduate, we will need to pay for registration as well, but now at least there’s hope for some of us. The app has free and premium versions, giving students various options on how they can literally snatch classes right out of the hands of other students. The free version is simple; it automatically refreshes your webpage every 45 seconds, faster than anyone could manually do it, completely eliminating the need to log back into your WebPortal after it has timed you out. The premium version can be bought for $29.99 and allows students to automatically add a class when a spot has become available. The app boasts that it is able to add “the class for you in 0.3 seconds."
Last year as a freshman, I know that I should have had the easiest time registering. But like many other SDSU students, I know that isn’t always the case. After registration was only open for two days, two out of the five classes I was planning on taking were filled. I was forced to change my entire schedule to accommodate for changing the classes that were already full to other time slots that were still available. I knew that if I was having difficulties as a freshman, I was going to be completely out of luck next year. Without buying the app this year, I’m almost guaranteed to have a breakdown.
“I actually bought the app,” a sophomore student who wishes to remain anonymous said. “I knew there was no way I would get the GE classes I need to complete this year so I can start my major classes, so I took the chance. It got me two classes that had long been filled before I was even able to register, so I would certainly recommend it to anyone, no everyone really!”
With the technological advancements of our generation, it was only a matter of time until an app like this was created. And although I’ve got to hand it to the creator, who is probably making quite some money off this app, it’s not fair. But who am I kidding? The system in itself has always seemed a little unfair. So in all truth, I know that this year, as I go into the worst year of registration for students at SDSU, I will invest in the premium version of the app and utilize it to the best of my abilities.
