UNC students come to Academic Advising in droves at drop/add deadline

Five weeks ago, Ravi Patel knew what he was going to do.

But he waited until Oct. 15 to do it.

“I told myself if I do badly on the exam, I would drop the course,” Patel said.

Patel, who arrived at the Steele Building early on the morning of Oct. 15, said he had a short wait — but the line behind him piled up quickly. Three days later, on the Oct. 18 deadline to drop or declare a class pass/D /D/fail, more than 1,300 others lined the halls to do the same.

And though that total was not drastically different from previous years, it did mean more stress for a smaller staff in the advising office.

“It was organized chaos,” said academic adviser Andre’ Wesson, who was surprised at the number of students that came in on the last day because students have been attending walk-in hours since September.

This year, some advisers left for other jobs, and the advising program lost a staff position and had to hold back another adviser position due to budget cuts, said Marilyn Wyrick, the office’s senior assistant dean.

The office is now in the hiring process to replace those advisers who left and to fill the opened adviser position.

The adviser-to-student ratio is still high, despite the losses.

Although this made Oct. 18 harder for the advisers, they knew what to expect.

All 19 full-time advisers worked that day, along with some part-time faculty members, Wyrick said. The department held all-day walk-in hours.

Wyrick said students tended to come in clumps, when classes ended. She said the average waiting time ranged from 10 to 15 minutes.

Students and advisers were in agreement that the timing was ideal. The deadline was shortly after midterms, so students could see their early grades before deciding to drop a class or pursue the pass/fail route.

After receiving his midterm results, freshman Sakib Huq dropped his biology lab on Oct. 18 because he did not have as much time to dedicate to it as he wanted.

“I’ll probably take it next semester,” he said.

Most of the students dropped courses, with only about 10 percent seeking pass/D /D/fail declarations, Wyrick said.

They were mostly seniors, she said, who just needed more hours to graduate.

“It felt busier this year,” Wyrick said.

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.