1—It’s for credit courses only (not PE, etc).  All students take four courses for credit; your having potential AP (or similar) credits does not affect that requirement, and PE 101 is in addition to the four courses. 

2—The courses you most want go in 1, 1A, 1AA, and 4A.  The top slot goes to your highest priority, etc.  Make sure times do not conflict among those choices (and don’t forget to account for lab times). 

3—Unless you are the sort of person who wins every lottery you enter, you might not get into all of your top choices.  That’s why we have spaces for alternatives and why you should use WebTree to include alternative choices.

4—Think in these terms: horizontal is “or” – 1 or 2 or 3.  Diagonal is “and” – 1 and 1A and 1AA.  Think in terms of getting course 1 or course 2; course 1 and course 1A.

5—2 is an alternative to 1.  3 is an alternative to 1 and 2 (if both are full).  Since you’ll get at most one course from that group, you may list courses that meet at the same time, if you wish.   #1, 1A, and 1AA are the three courses you most want.

6—The first course you get becomes the starting point on which the rest of your schedule is built.  If you get choice 1, the program looks for your next courses in Tree 1; if you get choice number 2, the program looks for your next courses in Tree 2; and so forth.  Because of that, the choices you put in 1A and 1B can also sensibly show up in 2A and 2B and in 3A and 3B – assuming that neither 2A or 2B meets at the same time as 2, and so forth.

7—“Tree 4” is different.  It holds your desired fourth course, but the program also will look there if it runs out of options (alternatives) anywhere else on the tree.

8—You control the alternatives.  The program will not look to see if there’s a vacancy in some other section of, say, BIO 111 if the section you list is full when the program gets to you.

9—It is possible that you don’t wind up with four courses initially.  That situation is not disastrous; it will happen fairly often.  That’s why we have time set aside during Orientation for you to adjust your schedule with your adviser.