Registration Overview & Academic Advising – New Students

Welcome to Bates! All of us here in Registrar’s Office are excited to have you join the Bates Community and assist you as you select your classes for the fall semester! Registration will be online and conducted through the Garnet Gateway and there will be opportunities to discuss course selections and questions with faculty advisors. The information below will give you an overview of how registration will work this summer. Please contact us at registrar@bates.edu with any questions!

Logging into the Garnet Gateway

To get to the Garnet Gateway go to the main Bates web page at www.bates.edu. Click on “MENU” at the top of the page. Click on the box labeled “The Quad.” Click on the red button labeled “Log in to Garnet Gateway.” This takes you to the Garnet Gateway login page. Log into the Garnet Gateway by entering your Bates ID number and your PIN, initially assigned to you by Admission. You must change your PIN to something new the first time you log in.

How to Register

1. Find Fall Courses

The Schedule of Courses presents those courses that will be offered in the upcoming fall semester. Prior to registration beginning, you can view the courses in the Schedule of Courses from the New Student Welcome page in the Garnet Gateway by clicking on the “Home” button in the left corner and then clicking on “Search Schedule of Courses” in the teal box. The Schedule of Courses lists the courses to be offered in the upcoming fall semester, including instructors, class meeting times, enrollment limits, and room assignments. Clicking on the title of a course brings up the description and additional information. The Bates Catalog includes full course information for all courses in the curriculum, as well as major and minor requirements. Not all courses in the Bates Catalog are offered every semester.

2. Enter Course Preferences

When registration is open, log into the Garnet Gateway and click on “Registration – First-Year Seminar Preferences.” To find courses and enter your preference for a course, click “Search Schedule of Courses” and the Fall 2023 term should be showing. Click submit and you are taken to the Search page. From the Search page you can select the department(s)/program(s) you are interested in which is the most common way to search the curriculum. Other search criteria are also available. Once the course offerings page comes, click in the checkbox to the left of the course section(s) you want and then click the “Register” button at the bottom of the page. Your course selections are not saved until you click the “Register” button. Be sure to view the results on the “Entering Students Registration” page. As you are viewing the course offerings, a “C” in place of the checkbox means the course is already full and/or closed.

3. First-Year Seminars Are First

You’ll be selecting your First-Year Seminar first. Your FYS instructor will be your pre-major academic advisor. Since First-Year Seminars are limited to 16 students each, please submit your first choice as well as no fewer than 8 alternates.  Submitting enough alternates increases the likelihood that we’ll be able to place you in a First-Year Seminar of your choosing. If you submit less than 8 alternates you may be registered for an FYS course that you did not select. 

4. Preferences and Alternates

As you add each course section from the schedule search page it will be marked “use as alternate.” Once you have 9 potential First-Year Seminars on the “Entering Students Registration” page, select the one that is your preferred FYS and use the “change status” pull-down menu to change it to “preferred course” and click “submit changes.”  This will indicate your top-choice FYS, leaving the other 8 as alternates. Please note that the alternates are not ranked; if you do not get your top-choice FYS, then you have an equal chance of getting placed into any of the 8 alternates.

5. Filling Your Schedule with Additional Courses

When we get to the second round of registration beginning August 2, 2023 you’ll be selecting the rest of your Fall 2023 semester courses. We ask that you select no fewer than 13 Fall courses.

As before with the First-Year Seminars, when you add each course section from the schedule search page it will be marked “use as alternate.” Once you have 13 courses on the “Entering Students Registration” page, select your 3 top-choice courses (you already have your First-Year Seminar) for the Fall and use the “change status” pull-down menu to change each of those 4 courses to “preferred course” and click “submit changes.”  This will indicate your 3 top-choice courses, leaving the other 10 as alternates.

Be sure you have looked at the meeting time of each preferred course and your assigned FYS to be sure they don’t have a time conflict! If there is a time conflict, the system should not permit you to select the class

Note: When selecting courses and alternates you don’t need to select more than one section of the same course. For example: If PSYC 101 A may be offered at 8:00am and PSYC 101 B may be offered at 1:10pm and you select PSYC 101 A and don’t get into it, we will automatically try to get you into PSYC 101 B.  Including multiple sections of the same course instead of listing true alternate courses reduces the chance that we’ll be able to place you into four total courses. So, you want to select no fewer than 13 DISTINCT courses. 

Also note:

  • When entering course preferences, error messages may appear. They include time conflicts, failure to meet a prerequisite requirement, failure to select a required linked discussion or laboratory section, etc. If an error appears, you are not registered for the course. Follow this link for a chart of common errors and how to correct them: http://www.bates.edu/registrar/registration/registration-error-messages
  • Not all courses have spaces or are available for first-years. Be sure to look at the current enrollments and course attributes in the schedule.
  • 200-level courses are only open first-years if so noted in the attribute column. Sample course results from the Search Schedule of Courses:

Sample of course search
Look-up Courses
Sample of a course with multiple laboratories: If a course has a lab (L1, L2, L3, etc.) or discussion (D1, D2, D3, etc.) you must register for a lecture section as well as one lab/discussion at the same time.

Look-up Courses with lab

Summer 2023 Registration Timetable

1) Course Selection for First-Year Seminars – July 17, 2023, 10:00 am ET – July 21, 2023 11:59 pm ET

Any time between July 17 at 10:00am ET and July 21 at 11:59pm ET, log in and select your top-choice First-Year Seminar and no fewer than 8 alternate First-Year Seminars (see instructions above).

Choosing a First-Year Seminar

First-Year Seminars are small seminar-style courses especially designed for first-year students.  The instructor of your seminar will also be your academic advisor. First-Year Seminars also satisfy your first-year writing, [W1], requirement.

2) Review your First-Year Seminar assignment – on or near July 28, 2023

Find out which FYS you’ve been placed into by logging into Garnet Gateway to view the results.  A notification will be sent to your Bates email when the results are available to view.

3) Request your additional preferred courses and alternates – August 2, 2023 10:00 am ET – August 8, 2023 11:59 pm ET

Now that you have a First-Year Seminar, any time between August 2 at 10:00am ET and August 8 at 11:59pm ET, log in and select your additional preferred 3 courses for the fall and 10 alternates (see instructions above). Four courses is the standard courseload per semester. Please provide no fewer than 13 distinct courses when you register, being sure to note your 3 top-choices from that list.

4) Review Your Fall Schedule – August 22 at about Noon ET

Between August 10 and August 22 the Registrar’s Office will assign students into the courses they requested, randomly assigning students into the spaces in limited courses. You may then view the results and see which courses you gained entrance to beginning the afternoon of August 22 by logging into Garnet Gateway and looking at your “View Course Schedule” page. This shows your current schedule after limited courses have been randomly filled. If you are happy with this schedule you are done!

You cannot adjust your schedule until Add/Drop opens on September 5, 2023.

5) Adjusting your Schedule (Add/Drop) – September 5, 2023 at 7:00 am ET

If you need to make changes to your schedule or add additional courses, a Registration Adjustment period, also known as “Add/Drop” will be available for all students beginning September 5.