Advisers will be able to release an advising hold within Ask Banner. Students cannot begin adding courses in Course Match until the hold is released. 

In Ask Banner the advisor clicks "Release_Holds.” Then they locate the student by their first and last name + 999###, and click “Release Hold” next to the student they wish to give access to Course Match preregistration. 

Once released, the student can immediately enter Course Match and begin the preregistration process. 

If your advisee is currently in their Junior Year Abroad (JYA) but anticipate returning to campus in the following semester, they must have their holds released. If your advisee is currently on-campus, but is going to study abroad the following semester, you do not need to release their hold because they will not take courses at Vassar that semester.

Yes, the Department Chair/Program Director or a  designee can release holds on Ask Banner if the advisor cannot.

Once a student has met with you and their advising hold has been released, they may update their course selections and rankings in Course Match as often as they wish until the preregistration window closes.

If a student submits their rankings and later decides to add or reorder courses, they can simply return to Course Match, make changes, and resubmit. No additional advisor approval or advising meeting is required after the initial hold is released.  

This flexibility is meant to encourage students to revisit their rankings for the best possible initial schedule before Phase II.

Encourage students to use tools such as:

Schedule Brewer to filter courses taking place that semester and visualize various class schedules, even if they conflict with each other.

Degree Works to plan their schedule around major requirements and decide how to rank courses in Course Match. For example, a student may need to rank a class as “Favorite” to meet their major requirements instead of another class that deeply interests them. 

Vassar Course Catalogue provides detailed information about each course, and may help students make informed decisions when planning their schedule. Remind them to confirm they are viewing the 2025/2026 academic year, since Googling “Vassar course catalogue” may bring up older versions, and that not all courses shown in the current catalogue are going to be taught every semester. 

1. Rank by priority, not probability. If a course is required for their major, it should be ranked higher. If a course strongly interests them, it should also be ranked higher. They should not lower a ranking because they believe they have a better chance of getting in.

·   Example: Even if your advisee receives Special Permission for a course, they still must select and rank that course in Course Match according to their true preference. They should not assume that receiving approval increases the likelihood that they are enrolled. When Course Match runs its final computation, the student’s rankings inform how much they want to be placed in that course. 

2.  Know that approvals don’t guarantee enrollment. Receiving Special Permission or a Prerequisite Override does not guarantee enrollment. Your advisee should rank that course based on how much they want it, in relation to other courses. 

3. Ranking is more powerful than class year priority, but class year priority is still in place. For this reason, no matter one's class-year, students must rank all courses based on their genuine preferences. If a senior ranks a course low, that tells Course Match they don’t care as much about getting placed than another course they ranked high. Similarly, a first-year who ranks a course high, Course Match works a lot harder to place them in that course, despite class year priority. 

4.  Select enough courses for Course Match to create a full schedule. Students should be encouraged to choose and rank more courses than the minimum Course Match requires, up to 25 courses. This gives Course Match the flexibility to build a full, conflict-free schedule. Students who select the bare minimum, or choose nearly all courses with time-conflicts, are much less likely to end up with a complete schedule. 

5.  Add all cross-listed sections and rank them closely together. The seats for cross-listed courses are divided between departments and programs, and will hold true to those limits. Therefore, students are advised to add all cross-listed sections and rank them closely together in their selections to increase the likelihood of registration. Course Match has conflicts embedded to not allow students to be registered for more than 1 of the cross-listed courses. 

Students will not be able to view courses in Course Match if their advising hold is not released. Be sure you release their advising hold promptly so they can begin the preregistration process. 

If you have released their advising hold and they still see no courses at all, they should contact the Registrar Office. The student may not be eligible to register for next semester and the Registrar can look for other holds.

Before releasing your advisee's holds, they will be able to view all courses but not select them because all courses are locked with a hold. 

After your advisee's holds are released, they can view all courses in Course Match. This includes courses they are not eligible to take, which will be locked and grayed-out. Any courses they are eligible to take can be selected and ranked. 

Grayed-out courses include:

• Courses with class-year restrictions that do not apply to the student 

  • • A senior seminar will appear grayed-out to First-year, Sophomore, and Junior students.

    • An introductory course with seats limited to First-Year and Sophomore students will appear grayed-out to Junior and Senior students.

• Special Permission courses that need instructor approval 

• Courses with Prerequisites that the student does not  officially satisfy.

If a student has submitted and been approved for a Special Permission course or a course with prerequisites via the Special Permission and Prerequisite Override Jotform, the  course will become visible to the student in Course Match.

Students will be able to find the Special Permission and Prerequisite Override Jotform in Course Match where they preregister, on Vassar’s Course Match information website, as well as the Registrar Forms webpage. 

No, neither approval for Special Permission courses or courses with Prerequisites guarantee enrollment. This simply makes courses available to select and rank in Course Match, so students should still rank that course how they want it in relation to other courses. 

In Course Match, students can determine if they need to submit a Special Permission Prerequisite Override Jotform if the course is grayed-out and has a special permission or prerequisite course tag at the end of the course code. If the grayed-out course requires Special Permission, it will have the tag “SP” at the end of the course code (e.g., ART-399-51SP). If the grayed-out course requires a Prerequisite Override, it will have the tag “PQ” at the end of the course code (e.g., AFRS-255-51PQ). 

We refer students to the course tag index on the student Course Match info site. 

Your advisee should submit the Special Permission Prerequisite Override Jotform as soon as they can to give the instructor and the Registrar's Office plenty of time to process their request. 

For Special Permissions: Once the request has been processed, your advisee will find that course added to their selections. If they haven’t selected enough courses yet, they will also see a ZZZ-placeholder course. They should delete this placeholder course. 

For Prerequisite Overrides: Once the request has been processed, your advisee must select and rank the course like any other course.

Enrollment is not guaranteed whether they received special permission or a prerequisite override. Therefore, your advisee needs to rank the course how they want it in relation to other courses. Doing so tells Course Match which class to prioritize over another. 

They recently requested and received special permission for a course. At the time their request was approved, they had not yet made their course selections. To ensure the permission-only course appeared in Course Match, a placeholder course (ZZZ-999-99) may have been added for them. Once your advisee has entered their actual course selections, they should make sure they have deleted the placeholder course. 

Although students are required to rank at least 2x the number of credits/units they hope to take, advising them to rank 3–4x that number increases the likelihood that Course Match can assemble a complete schedule that includes their preferred courses. We ask that students not add more than 25 courses to help computation speed run smoothly. We may find we need to remove students’ bottom-ranked courses until 25 remain. 

Students should know they are free to select any courses that interest them and meet their academic requirements, so selecting more courses than the bare minimum is ideal. 

They can also add courses with time-conflicts, but Course Match needs broad enough course selections to create a full schedule. So, if a student selects a lot of courses, but the majority of them take place on Monday/Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. and Wednesday/Friday at 1:30 p.m. without enough alternate options, they may not get a full schedule. 

Course Match works best when students rank courses according to their true preferences, and the algorithm is designed to balance demand across all students. If students rank a course lower because they have been told it has “low demand,” they may not get the schedule they actually want. Additionally, when rankings don’t reflect true preferences, it reduces fairness and can lead to unnecessary scheduling issues. Instead, encourage students to rank courses honestly based on how much they want or need them.

Yes. Students can select and rank courses with overlapping meeting times if they are interested in both. Course Match automatically ensures that students will not be enrolled in two courses that meet at the same time, even if both courses are ranked in the same category.

You can encourage advisees to use Schedule Brewer to identify and visualize potential time conflicts before preregistration. This planning tool helps students see how different course combinations fit together, though it does not register them for courses. 

The ranking categories – Favorite, Great, Good, and Acceptable – are meant to reflect how well each course fits the student’s academic needs and preferences, not to rate their feelings about the quality of the course itself.

Students rank courses as Favorite, Great, Good, or Acceptable, which guides Course Match in assembling their schedule.  

• Favorite: The student’s absolute top choice (only one allowed).  This is the class that they need/want the most above all others.  This category is optional, so if they don’t have a single favorite, just leave it blank and place their top 2 or 3 courses at the top of the Great category instead.  

• Great: These courses closely align with the student’s top academic needs and preferences (select as many as they like).  

• Good: These courses somewhat align with the student’s top academic needs and preferences (select as many as they like).  

• Acceptable: Courses that the student is willing to take and could fit into their schedule, even if those courses are not their top choices (select as many as they like). 

No. Adding more options never hurts. It simply gives the algorithm more valid schedules to choose from, which increases the likelihood of building a complete schedule with the top-ranked courses included. 

Advise students not to place all their courses in the same category. When every course is ranked as “Great,” Course Match interprets that as the student having very little preference between their selections. 

Although a student might think they’re signaling that “all these courses are important,” doing so actually tells the system “I don’t have a strong preference for any particular course.” Without clear distinctions in ranking, Course Match has less information to prioritize the courses that truly matter most. 

Encourage students to create contrast in their rankings by identifying which courses are important for graduating or most interesting to them. This helps Course Match build a schedule that better reflects their actual academic needs and interests. 

If a course is cross-listed, students should select and closely rank all available sections to maximize their chances of placement.

Example: If a student wants ESCI-202-01 (cross-listed with ENST, ESSC, GEOG, and URBS), they should rank:

1. ESCI-202-01 first, followed by

2. ENST-202-01

3. ESSC-202-01

4. GEOG-202-01

5. URBS-202-01

The course prefix they prefer most (e.g., ESCI) should be listed first, if they have one. In most cases Degree Works recognizes cross-listings and applies the course toward degree requirements regardless of the prefix. However, students can change the prefix through the Registrar’s Office after classes begin.

The other cross-listed course prefixes should be ranked immediately after, in the same category. If the cross-listed course is the student’s Favorite, they should place their most preferred prefix in “Favorite” (if they have one). The remaining cross-listed sections should be grouped at the very top of the “Great “category. Otherwise, all cross-listed prefixes for the cross-listed course should remain clustered closely together within a single category (Great, Good Acceptable).

Not during preregistration. Neither students nor faculty can see how many students ranked a course. This is intentional. Course Match works best when students rank honestly based on their own preferences, not perceived demand. 

Yes, it makes a difference. Placing one class in the “Favorite” category gives it significantly higher priority in Course Match compared to courses ranked as “Great.” If both courses are placed in the “Great” category, one after the other, they will be treated as having nearly equal (but still high) preference. 

Remind the student that ranking a course as “Favorite” is optional. If they do not have a single, absolute top choice above all others, it’s better to list both courses at the top of the “Great” category instead.

Ranking is more powerful than class year priority, but class year priority is still in place. Students with more seniority are not guaranteed placement, but they have a better chance of getting a schedule with one or more of their top ranked courses. 

This is because each student receives a "budget" that helps get them into courses depending on their class year. Freshmen receive a base-budget; sophomores receive approximately 10% greater budget; juniors receive approximately 25% greater budget; Seniors receive the highest budget, approximately 50% greater (these budget percentages are subject to change). 

However, rankings still matter most. If a senior ranks a course low, that signals to Course Match that the course is not a high priority for them. If a first-year student ranks a course very highly, Course Match will prioritize trying to place them in that course — even though they have a smaller budget.