Waitlist | Office of the Registrar | SIU

If you receive such an error message on the Register for Classes page when attempting to register for a section that is open to waitlisting and you wish to get on the waitlist for that course section, then click on the drop-down arrow next to the course under the Action column, select the "Waitlisted" choice, and then click the Submit button.  If successful,¹ the course will be shown as Waitlisted with today’s date but with zero credit hours (since you are not actually registered in it yet).  Then, on the Schedule Details tab, you will be able to see your Waitlist Position for that course (lower Waitlist Position numbers are better).

¹ It is possible that you will not be successful in getting onto the waitlist.  For example, if the waitlist itself is already full, you will not be able to get onto it.  Also, if you fail to meet the course pre-requisites or other course restrictions, you will not be able to get onto the waitlist, just like you would be prevented from directly registering into the course if it were not already full.

You can monitor your Waitlist Position to see if you are getting closer to the top (which is Position # 1).  Once at # 1, if another spot in the course opens up, it will be made available exclusively to you for a short amount of time (not less than 24 hours), and you will be notified of this opening via an e-mail sent to your SIUC e-mail address within an hour after the opening occurs.

Sometimes a spot will open up because the department increased the capacity of the course.  More usually, though, a spot will open up because the student at the top of the waitlist failed to act quickly enough when given the chance to register into the course.  Another option would be that a student already registered in the course has just dropped the course.

The notification e-mail will tell you exactly how long you have to do something (as will the Message section of the Schedule Details tab on the Register for Classes page), and will give you more details about what to do.  If you have been on the waitlist for a long time and are not sure if you should still get into that section, please check with your advisor.

If you still want to register for that section, you should go to the Register for Classes page in the main student Registration website, click the drop-down arrow next to the course under the Action column, select the "Registered for Class" choice, then click the Submit button.  If successful, you will be officially registered in that section and that course will be shown with an actual number of credit hours (no longer zero hours) in your schedule.

Only if you have set up your SIUC e-mail address to forward e-mails to another e-mail address.  Official University communications are sent to the SIUC e-mail address, so students are expected to monitor that address on a regular basis. 

Because the amount of time you would have to deal with changing a waitlisted status to a registered status is as short as 24 hours, you should make it a habit of checking your SIUC e-mail at least daily, if not more frequently.

There are a number of error messages that could be applicable to this registration transaction, as they would be to any normal registration transaction.  Many of them have to do with restrictions on the course that you have not yet satisfied, or with conflicts with other courses for which you are already registered.

Please do not keep submitting the registration request over and over without trying to resolve the error, because that will rarely solve the problem.  Instead, you may wish to contact your advisor and tell him/her the error message to get help with resolving it.  (For example, your advisor may post an override that can help satisfy the error.)

It sounds like a registration hold has been placed on your account since you waitlisted the class, so you will need to take care of that hold before you can do anything with the waitlisted class.  It's a good idea while you are on a waitlist to check the View Holds page regularly so that, if a new hold pops up, you can get it taken care of before you are under a tight waitlist notification deadline.

Once the notification period expires, you will be dropped from the waitlist and no longer affiliated with that section.  If you still want to try to get into that section, you will have to get on the waitlist again.  However, if you do so, you will then be at the bottom of the waitlist (not at the top).

No.  Neither the instructor nor your advisor can override a closed section that is waitlistable and get you into that section (any attempt to do so will result in an error for them¹).  Waitlisting is designed for a "first-to-act, first-in" experience for students, so circumventing the waitlist is not allowed by the system.

¹ The error message for the advisor in Admin Pages will say, "ORACLE error: unable to INSERT record."  The error message for the instructor in SSB will be a long data dump that starts off by saying, in part, "error during execution of trigger 'SATURN.SIU_SFRSRPO_CAPACITY'."  Neither the advisor nor the instructor can do anything to get past these errors, since this is intentional system behavior for a waitlistable course.

For most courses, any waitlists will be purged about a week before the official start of the term.  For Winter Intersession and Summer Intersession courses, any waitlists will be purged about a week before the start of the Intersession.

If you are still on the waitlist when the waitlist is purged, you will be sent an e-mail (to your SIUC e-mail address) letting you know that it was purged and that you are no longer affiliated with the course.  If the course is still closed once the waitlist no longer exists, you will not be able to register for it unless you are given permission by the instructor (which will require an override entered by the instructor or your advisor).