Registration Stages in Workday

Stage 1 – Course Offerings Available

Registration officially begins once the next semester’s schedule is published. At this point students begin making saved schedules, requesting eligibility rule overrides and meeting with their advisors. Advisor holds should only be lifted once an advisor is satisfied with the student’s choices.  Advisors can see all saved schedules and existing advisor holds from the advisor dashboard, in the BOW STU My Advisees’ Holds and Saved Schedules report. If a student has any additional holds, they should see the office that placed the hold; if it isn’t lifted, they will not be able to register.

Stage 2 - Registration

This stage starts with the registration appointment for seniors/rising seniors opening.   Approximately every other day (avoiding weekends), a new group of students has their appointment open, starting with the students closest to graduation. Once a student’s registration appointment is open, it stays open except for during stage 3.  There are two important things to remember about this stage: 

• This is the stage when students should register or waitlist for courses they need and want (up to 4.5 credits). They should not request to come off of waitlists at this time, nor should they make requests to switch labs etc. At this point the most important thing for students to do is to be registered or on waitlists for the courses they need and want. 

• At this point, faculty should be paying attention to their enrollments, but NOT trying to make adjustments to reserved seats, eligibility rules or other course properties.  Additionally, if students ask to be on waitlists, faculty should direct them to add themselves to the waitlist in Workday. 
• Students can request eligibility rule overrides even before their appointment opens. Please note that if you approve an override, this allows a student to register or waitlist for a course for which they do not meet the eligibility criteria. It does not override the class size, or reserve seats. 

Stage 3 - Waitlist Reordering

After all students have had a chance to register/waitlist for courses, on an appointed day, registration will be paused.  At this time, students cannot make any changes to their registrations. A form that can be used to reorder your course waitlist(s) is distributed and faculty can access their waitlists in Workday and use the reordering criteria to guide their list. At this time the Registrar also expires all reserved seats (except for first year seats for fall registrations). This means that students will be offered seats solely in terms of their position on the waitlist. 

Stage 4 – Registration Reopens

After all requested waitlist re-orderings have been processed in Workday., registration reopens. Students will be able to view their position on the waitlist. Students who have the most need for a class should be at the top of the waitlists. Students can add, drop and accept waitlist offers, so Workday will automatically send offers for available seats to students as they open.  As students drop to add other courses, seats become available and the waitlists will do the work. 

Stage 5 – Start of Term

Approximately a week before the term starts, instructors should check their rosters and waitlists. Instructors should be aware of students who are still on the waitlist, but who have made reasonable cases for being in the course. They should invite those students to attend the first class. During the first and second day of term (almost all classes have had one meeting by the end of the second day of classes), the Registrar will start taking enrollment cap override request forms from instructors. Instructors can give permission to add seats to their classes for certain students. Because of the way waitlists function, students should not be given these overrides until the third day of classes as it is probable they will get into the class through the regular waitlisting process. Once a class enrollment size is overridden, that seat is available even if the student drops. Students can add and drop through the first week of classes as long as they meet the eligibility requirements or have an override. Once the term begins, students may register for a fifth credit. 

As of today, November 18, 2025, we are in Stage 3 of 2026 spring registration and we suggest that you reorder your waitlists and encourage all students that have contacted you to have patience to let the registration process unfold as it’s meant to. Making manual adjustments now can introduce inadvertent logjams in the process.   

Lastly, we want to encourage you to put in a ticket if you have any questions, can’t find something you need or want an enhancement in Workday. We can’t fix things we don’t know about, and we are grateful for your help!