Important Waitlist Facts

• Waitlist compatibility: Not all courses can have waitlists. Waitlists are compatible with:
  
  • Course sections built on Part-of-Term 1 only
  • Fall and Winter Term course sections (not Summer Term sections)
  • Single-term courses (i.e. multi-term/spanned courses such as D1/D2 courses cannot have waitlists)
  • Course sections without linked activities (i.e. sections with linked lecture/lab/tutorial cannot have waitlists)
• When do waitlists open? Waitlists should be added to select eligible course sections only after all eligible new and returning students have had the chance to begin registering. Upper-level courses (2nd year courses and higher) can have waitlists added 3-4 days after registration opens, and lower-level courses should have waitlists added about 2 weeks after registration opens (exact dates to be shared by Enrolment Services every year).
• How does the waitlist process work? The waitlist process runs twice daily, at midnight and at noon, on weekdays. Here is how it works:
  • Checks course reference numbers (CRNs) with waitlists: If a seat becomes available, the next student on the waitlist receives an email inviting them to register for the CRN .
  • Issues a CAPACITY permit: A CAPACITY permit, valid for 24 hours, is issued to the student. This permit temporarily allows them to register for the course and is visible in the student’s record in the SFASPRO Banner form, listed under the username SFKWLAT. (See screen capture below.)

    

  • Removes expired permits: The process also removes any previously issued CAPACITY permits that have expired.
• Access to myCourses: Students on a course's waitlist may have limited access to course resources in myCourses. However, individual instructors may choose to share Zoom links with waitlisted students to 'sit in' on lectures before enrollment. This is entirely at the discretion of each instructor. For more information, refer to the myCourses Knowledge Base.
• Information for students: Waitlist information for students is available at mcgill.ca/students/courses/add/waitlisting. Please share this link with your students when adding waitlists to course sections.

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How to Add a Waitlist to a Course Section 

1. In the SSASECT Banner form, enter your desired term and CRN. Then, select SSADETL from the “Options” menu.
2. Click Next block and go to the “Degree Program Attributes” tab
3. Add the RMWL attribute (if it does not already appear there) and click ”Save”. Adding the RMWL attribute causes a “NOTES: Waitlist section-use Quick Add” message to display in the Minerva Class Schedule for that CRN.
4. Next, close this form (click on the “X”) to return to SSASECT.
5. Click “Next block” and go to the “Section Enrollment Information” tab
6. In the “Enrollment Details” sub-tab, enter your waitlist maximum and click ”Save”. Your waitlist should be around 10% of the maximum enrolment for that CRN to ensure that all students that join the waitlist can realistically hope to register for that CRN eventually.

   

Note for sections with reserved seats: If your CRN has reserved seats, you will be prevented from adding a waitlist maximum in the “Enrollment Details” tab. You must manage a waitlist for each reserved seat rule individually (see the following section).

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How to Add a Waitlist to a Course Section with Reserved Seat Rules

If your section has reserved seat rules created for it, first follow steps 1-5 above. Then, refer to the following points:

• Waitlist numbers cannot be managed on the “Enrollment Details” tab on CRNs with reserved seats. Instead, a waitlist can be added for each individual reserved seat rule using the fields dedicated to waitlists in the “Reserved Seats” tab (right-hand columns).
• Even on CRNs with reserved seats, the total waitlist size should remain around 10% of the maximum enrolment. To achieve this, it is strongly recommended that you apply a +-10% waitlist to each reserved seat rule; this will ensure that all student populations having access to the CRN will be able to join the waitlist, and all students that join the waitlist can realistically hope to register for that CRN eventually.

Note: it’s not always possible to achieve a 10% waitlist on all rules (ex.: rules with less than 5 seats usually should not have any waitlist spots), so you should use your best judgement when applying waitlists to CRNs with reserved seat rules.

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Managing Waitlist Numbers

As students drop the CRN throughout the add/drop period, students at the top of the waitlist will be invited to register for the available spots. Shortly after noon and midnight every weekday (Sunday night until Friday at noon), the waitlist process checks for available spots in the CRN and invites students from the waitlist as appropriate. Students who receive an "invitation to register" email from the Waitlist process are issued a CAPACITY registration permit, valid for 24 hrs, allowing them to register. The permit will appear as assigned by the "SFKWLAT" user (representing the waitlist process), assigned at the same time the "invitation to register" email is sent. The process also checks for expired permits and removes them from students' records.

If, at any point, the number of available seats in the CRN is greater than the number of students on the waitlist, students on the waitlist can simply drop out of the waitlist and register for the CRN directly. This is because the waitlist will only hold the number of seats necessary to satisfy the current waitlist. For example, if a CRN has a waitlist with 3 out of 5 spots, and 4 seats become available in the CRN, the waitlist will only hold 3 seats and the 4th will be made available to other students from outside the waitlist. For this reason, a waitlisted student can simply drop from the waitlist and register for that 4th seat.

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How to Close a Waitlist with Students Still In It

There are number of ways to close a waitlist with students already in it:

• Method 1: set the waitlist cap to zero and give each student still on the waitlist a CAPACITY permit, and notify them by e-mail that they can register. Do not raise the section cap; *see note below.
• Method 2: set the waitlist cap to one and wait for all waitlisted students to get invited to register for the course section. After the last waitlisted student has been invited to register, set the waitlist cap to zero.
• Method 3: reduce the waitlist cap to one and raise the section cap by precisely the number of students still on the waitlist minus one. For example, if 8 students are on the waitlist, reduce the waitlist cap to 1, then raise the section cap by 7. The 7 students will be invited by the waitlist process to register. Once the 7 students have registered (or are dropped by the process if they don’t respond to the waitlist invitation), set the waitlist cap to zero, but do NOT raise the section cap. The last student can be given a CAPACITY permit and you will have to contact the student by e-mail to prompt them to register.

* Note: reducing the WL cap to 0 indicates to the system that the section enrolment is not controlled by a WL and opens the course to other students. This means that students who had previously been on the waitlist would lose their priority and other students could get into the section before them.

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How Staff/Faculty View Specific Waitlist Information

Staff with Minerva Student Records Admin access can view waitlist details in Minerva > SR Admin > Catalog and Schedule Menu > Class Lists.

1. Search and click on your CRN to obtain the Class List.
2. There, you will see the Enrollment Counts section below the Course Information. If there are students on the waitlist, a “Wait List” hyperlink will appear in the “Enrollment Counts” section. You can toggle between ‘Enrollment’ and ‘Wait List’ to view students who are registered or on the waitlist. For waitlisted students, you can view their position on the waitlist and, where applicable, the notification expiry information (far right of the screen).

   

Students who have received an invitation to register will have a waitlist position number of “0” (zero). Students who have not yet been invited to register will have position number 1 or higher, with no information in the notification expiry column.

Note: There can sometimes be students with a ‘waitlist position’ number of 1 or higher and also a notification expiry date in the far-right column. This gives the appearance that the student was given a permit when he/she was not in position zero; however, this is caused by the student previously joining this waitlist (the student was once on the waitlist and given a permit with an expiry date, but dropped from the waitlist or failed to use the permit). The older expiry date is part of the student’s record, and when the student rejoins a waitlist it continues to show. If the student gets invited to register a second time the new expiry date will replace the older one.

Faculty can similarly view students who are on waitlists in their CRNS via the Minerva > Faculty tab > Select Course Section or Class List. They can then view class lists or waitlists that correspond to those courses they are attached to as an instructor (the view is the same as in the screen shot above).

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Permit Overrides for Students Still on the Waitlist

Permit overrides may continue to be granted to students on a discretionary basis for courses that have active waitlists; for example, for a student who needs to register in a required course in his/her last term before graduation.

If the permit is granted to a student who IS NOT on the waitlist, the student should be advised to use the permit as soon as possible by using the ‘quick add’ feature in Minerva. Those students who are on the waitlist but have not yet been notified of a space in the course will be affected as they may have to wait longer for a vacancy in the course. Those students who have already received an invitation to register will be unaffected (i.e. both invited students and students given permits will be able to register, but the invited students will have a deadline to act).

If the permit is granted to a student who IS on the waitlist, the student should be advised to select the action ‘web register’ from the dropdown list attached to the CRN in his/her Registration Menu in Minerva. It is not necessary for the student to drop from the waitlist and do a simultaneous ‘quick add’.

Note: On rare occasions, the ‘web register’ command does not display after the permit has been granted. As long as the permit is still on the record, students should web drop and then quick add the CRN to register. The automated e-mail sent by the waitlist process also includes instructions for when the ‘web register’ command does not appear.

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