With students constantly decrying Columbia’s seemingly rigged class registration system, the university has announced its new strategy for ensuring that as many students get their desired classes as possible: waitlists for waitlists. This system will set a cap on the number of students who can be on a waitlist for a class. Then, once the waitlist is filled up, remaining interested students will add themselves to a waitlist for the waitlist. Columbia has also announced that, in the event that the secondary waitlists get too long, they may implement a waitlist for the waitlist waitlists.
The Fed received comments from Executive Registration Supervisor Richie Lesclown, who insisted we call him Dick: “At the end of the day, the expensive price tag of a university like Columbia needs to be justified, and waitlist waitlists do just that by providing transparency. You may not get into any classes you’d ever want, but at least you’ll know that you just *barely* missed it. There’s something beautiful in that.”
We thank Dick and all the wonderful staff who work tirelessly to ensure that the backbone of the college education, the waitlist, remains a core part of the Columbia academic experience.
