Honors students will receive priority registration over regular students this spring to enroll in fall 2018 classes.
For the first time, honors seniors, juniors and sophomores will register after athletes and before non-Honors students.
Registration for Marquette’s 469 honors students will take place March 26-27 by credit, while non-honors students will start registration in early to mid-April. Registration begins April 6 for current non-honors sophomores and April 11 for current non-honors freshmen.
“Core Honors students are even more likely than other Marquette undergrads to put together programs of study across colleges and disciplines, and priority registration helps make that possible,” Zurcher said.
The decision was made by the Provost and other offices on campus, including the University Honors Program, Office of Admissions, Office of the Registrar, advising offices and the Office of Student Development. These offices will be involved in making the new process work, Amelia Zurcher, director of the honors program, said in an email.
Many of Marquette’s peer institutions give priority registration to honors students, including Loyola-Chicago, Saint Louis University, Creighton and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Lily Dysart, the honors program student advisory board freshman representative and student in the College of Arts & Sciences, said she thinks the priority registration is a good perk for honors students.
“Non-honors students might be upset because I know all Marquette students work really hard,” Dysart said. “Since honors students have certain required classes we have to take that are only offered at certain times, early registration will help us take both classes for honors and our majors.
There is less availability of honors classes compared to non-honors classes, and the class size tends to be smaller. For example, honors philosophy of ethics is offered during seven time slots and non-honors is offered during twenty.
However, Elli Pointner, an honors program junior in the College of Education, said she understands that registration is a frustrating time for everyone.
“I get that registration time can literally change the course of your whole semester and possibly your whole college career,” Pointner said. “I think there is a chance this change in registration procedure will receive some pushback from non-honors students.”
She said Marquette should be open to hearing concerns from people in the community about the change in registration procedure.
Laney Decker, a freshman in the College of Communication, said the priority registration makes the honors program more appealing.
“If I had known about this when applying to Marquette, I would have considered applying to the honors program,” Decker said. “I don’t think this is a problem yet, and we won’t know until registration actually happens.”
