Course Selection

Choosing your Classes

UCI Schedule of Classes Website: https://www.reg.uci.edu/perl/WebSoc

  1. Visit the website above
  2. Select the correct term (if you don’t see the term you are looking for, it means the schedule for that term has not been released yet)
    1. NOTE: UCI runs on a quarter system, not a semester system, so we have 4 terms per year – Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. You will take classes in Fall, Winter and Spring. Each quarter is 10 weeks long.
  3. For department, select the department you’d like to take courses in (e.g. “ENGR….Engineering”)
  4. Hit the “Display Web Results” button. You do not need to fill in any of the other options
  5. You should then see a list of all the courses you have available to choose from
    1. Most students choose to take around 3 courses per quarter
    2. You should choose your courses based on the requirements that you need in order to complete your degree at your home institution. To find courses that will match your degree requirements, see the section below titled: “How to Check Course Descriptions.”
  6. For the classes you’d like to take please make note of the following
    1. Class number
    2. Course code
    3. Any associated lab or discussion code (if necessary)
  7. For classes with discussion or labs listed, you must choose one discussion/lab to attend along with the lecture.
  8. As you are choosing your courses, please make sure you have no schedule conflicts, meaning that you are not trying to enroll in two classes that are offered at the same time or overlapping times. I suggest you use some calendar software to make sure this doesn’t happen.
  9. In addition, it is very important that you check the prerequisites for the courses you want to take and make sure that you have taken similar courses so that you will not be behind in the course. See section below titled “how to check course descriptions” for more information.
  10. Once you have chosen all your classes, please fill out the course selection form sent to you by email.

As an example, say you want to take ENGR 54, with discussion on Friday from 11-11:50 am, as shown in the image below:

You would need the following numbers:

    Class Number: ENGR 54
    Course Code: 13003
    Lab: n/a
    Discussion: 13004

Important Notes on Course Selection:

  1. You will most likely be taking courses within your major but you may also find some courses under the more general engineering department: “ENGR”.
  2. Courses with a class number of 0-99 are generally freshman and sophomore level courses, 100-199 is generally junior and senior level courses, and anything 200+ is a graduate level course.
  3. If you are enrolling in individual study 199, or any non-engineering courses, please make sure to read through the section titles “forms needed for special cases” below.
  4. You can select courses listed as “NewOnly”.
  5. For lectures, some courses offer more than one lecture option. If that is the case, please select the lecture that is OPEN, otherwise we will likely enroll you in that lecture anyway. If there is no open lecture option, we will do our best to enroll you, however, please have a backup plan since enrollment into a full course is not guaranteed. 
  6. The same applies for discussion/lab sections, please do your best to select sections that are listed as OPEN. It is unlikely that we could enroll you in a section that is listed as FULL if there are other open sections available. 
  7. Courses with a P at the end of course number (for example, EECS 224P) are not available for enrollment, these courses are reserved for masters of engineering students ONLY.

Standard Example of a Good Course Schedule

Each quarter, you are required to take a minimum of 12 units (generally 3 classes). We do not advise that you take more than 12 units as the workload can be quite difficult and fast paced at UCI.

In general, if your home institution’s requirements will allow it, we advise that each quarter you take the following three classes to meet your 12 unit requirement:

  • 1 undergraduate level course (3-4 units) – this will allow you to maintain a higher GPA and also not overwhelm yourself with too many high level courses.
  • 1 graduate level course (3-4 units) – these courses may be transferred to your grad degree later on (see the section below titled “Graduate course transfers” for more information.
  • Either individual study (199) or senior design project (159) (3-4 units) – this will give experience working with a professor on a project and will also give you a chance to get a recommendation letter from that professor for your grad school application. 

If one or more of the classes you choose are 3 units, you may not reach the 12 unit minimum without taking an additional class. In this situation, we advise that you take ENGR 93 (1-2 units) or ENGR 100 (1 unit). These courses are not too difficult and shouldn’t take away from the rest of your studies.

Useful Information and Tools:

How to Check Course Descriptions

For a list of all engineering courses including a brief course description and prerequisites, you can use our course catalogue. The courses are listed alphabetically by department: http://catalogue.uci.edu/thehenrysamuelischoolofengineering/#courseinventory

To view the full course outlines/syllabi, please reference the documents stored in this google drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1Wav7O2D9fBLSM9zyHsQlj14FM3xl2j21. NOTE: it has come to our attention that some of these courses are out of date, we are actively updating them as much as possible.

Check prerequisites: Please make sure to check that you have met all the prerequisites for the courses you want to take with similar courses at your home institution. We have had a few students who had to drop courses because they did not consider the prerequisites. You can find prerequisites listed under the course description on the course catalog above.

How to Check which Quarter Courses are Offered

You may view the course teaching plan to determine which quarter courses will be offered. You can use this plan to start determining which courses you may want to take in winter and spring so that you can ensure that you fulfill your home institution requirements.

Please use the following legend to read the teaching plan:
– Blank grey cells mean the course will not be offered.
– Any cell with a professor’s name or the word staff means they are planning to offer the course that quarter.

Non-Engineering Classes

You are allowed to take up to 2 non-engineering classes for the entire year. Enrollment is not guaranteed so make sure to have a backup plan if you cannot get into the course.

Please see the link below for a list of all non-engineering courses that are NOT available for you to enroll in. The list is in the top section under “Exceptions” (you may ignore all the other content on this page). Be sure to click the link in the last bullet point under exceptions, where it says “View the list of unavailable courses” as this will show additional courses that are not available for enrollment. https://ce.uci.edu/student-resources/concurrent-enrollment/approvals

In order to enroll in a non-engineering course, you will need to fill out the DCE concurrent enrollment form, which is released about a month before classes start: https://ce.uci.edu/student-resources/concurrent-enrollment/registration.

If you are not enrolled in the course by the first week of classes, you should email the professor and ask them to manually add you to the canvas course page so that you do not fall behind while we work on processing your enrollment. We often won’t know if we can enroll you in the course until the second week of classes so please be patient.

Senior Design Projects

Senior design projects are one of the ways to meet the requirements for your graduation design project at your home institution. Generally for these courses, you will work in teams of 4-6 with a professor on a single project. Depending on your major, you will generally take this course for 2-3 quarters in order to complete the project. Please see below for the course number for each major:

  • Biomedical Engineering – BME 180A
  • Civil and Environmental Engineering – CEE 181A
  • Electrical Engineering and Computer Science – EECS 159A
  • Mechanical Engineering – MAE 189
  • Materials Science Engineering – MSE/CBEMS 189A

For EECS 159A, you will choose your lecture, discussion, and lab section for the course ahead of time, however, the project lab section will depend on which professor you work with for the class (usually determined during week 1 of the course) so you can leave the course code blank for the project lab section. You will receive more information from the course instructor about how to choose a project section once the course starts. Once you have chosen a project section and the professor approves you to work with them, please ask them to send you a 4 digit authorization code. You can then email the code to engineering-3plus2@uci.edu and we will process your enrollment into the lab section. The authorization code is due by Friday of week 2 of classes.

Note: for this course, there aren’t specific project topics. As part of the class, you will form a team and decide on a project in collaboration with a faculty advisor. You can view the faculty advisors that are available by going to https://www.reg.uci.edu/perl/WebSoc and looking at the list of professors listed for the lab sections of EECS 159A. 

Individual Study 199

If you are planning to take individual study (i.e. 199 courses), you will still need to fill out the Proposal for Individual Study Form. Once you have this form filled out, along with the professor’s signature, you can email it to the 3+2 engineering email with a subject line of “YourFirstName YourLastName – 199 form”. For example: “Kristin Roher – 199 form”. Note – make sure to include the number of proposed units you plan to take, normally 4 units unless your professor says otherwise. No need to fill out the design units. The form is due by Friday of Week 2 of classes (usually around Oct 5-8).

Important: When submitting your course selections for fall, you may not know which professor will agree to work with you for 199, therefore, you can just put 199 on your course selections without a course code and we will fill in the course code for you once you submit the above mentioned form.

Tips for finding a Professor

  • Go to the engineering website, http://engineering.uci.edu/.
  • Click on Departments, and then select your field of study, and select Research. 
  • You will then see a webpage with several “research thrusts” listed. Select the one you are most interested in and then you will be able to see a list of all professors that fall under that category on the bottom right hand side of the page.
  • Send emails to professors with similar interests to you
    • Ask the professor to meet with you to discuss your interests and possible working them to complete individual study.
    • Please be very polite in emails. You should email professors one at a time.

If you are interested in working with a CS professor..

  • Take EECS 159 (senior design) and choose a CS professor listed there
  • Take CS 199, however, this will count toward your quota of 2 non-engineering courses

We suggest that you do not sign up for both individual study and senior design unless you have a good reason for it as this would be a lot of project based work and would be very time consuming. Some universities will allow you to take Individual Study to satisfy your graduation design project requirements, instead of a senior design course.

If you are an incoming student arriving in September and would like to sign up for individual study, please put individual study on your schedule as a placeholder and then you can find a professor to work with and fill out the “‘proposal for individual study form” (mentioned below) when you arrive at UCI in September. For BME students, your masters degree will be a thesis only degree so we highly suggest that you start working on a project by taking individual study in your first quarter at UCI. Otherwise it may be hard to complete the requirements for your masters degree within two years. For all other students, you will have the option to choose do a thesis or coursework for your masters degree. Note: Everyone will receive the same degree no matter which option you choose.

Graduate Course Transfers

You can transfer up to 3 graduate level courses if you meet all of the following requirements: 

  1. You do not count any of the courses toward your undergraduate degree and you can provide proof of this.
  2. The courses you are trying to transfer have a course code of 200+.
  3. You remain within the same degree program that you studied at UCI for this year (for example: if you are in the EECS department and you continue for your grad degree in EECS as well)
    • Note: if you do not remain within the same degree program but are still within engineering, then you can still transfer up to 3 grad level courses only if those courses are part of your course requirement for the M.S. degree program.

If you are admitted to either the Master of Engineering Program or Master of Computer Science Program, no graduate course can be counted as their courses requirements are very specific.

If you are admitted to the Master of Science in Computer Science, the ability to transfer grad courses would be dependent on the courses you are petitioning. However, as always, if a graduate course is used to satisfy degree requirements of another program such as an undergraduate degree, it cannot then be reapplied towards a graduate degree.

Forms Needed for Special Cases

  • Form for Individual Study 199 – due Friday of Week 2
    • Individual Study 199 Form
    • This form is required for all students who wish to enroll in individual study 199.
    • You will need to have the faculty member who you wish to study with sign the form.
    • Email the completed form to engineering-3plus2@uci.edu.
  • DCE Concurrent Enrollment Form – see link below for due date