Students who failed to pre-register or who didn't get the classes they wanted, often have trouble with ASU's drop/add system.
ASU computer science sophomore Rocky Smith said he has got something to make the hassles of drop/add a thing of the past.
To help students defeat drop/add woes, Smith launched www.perfectschedule.com, a Web site that automatically notifies students of available seats in desired classes.
Smith got the idea after unsuccessfully pre-registering for a class.
"I tried to sign up for Physics 131 at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays," Smith said. "They gave me a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class at 7:40 in the morning."
Facing the "huge inconvenience" of driving to school three more days a week from his north Phoenix residence, Smith created the program and shared it with fellow classmates.
"The idea just came over me," he said. "I wrote the program in the summer and my friends started using it, and then I created a Web site to set a link between me and everybody else."
Valentin Stoyanov, a computer information systems and accounting junior, has used Smith's program and visited the Web site. He said the site would be particularly useful for freshman students.
"I tested the Web site," he said. "It's good for the hard-to-get courses. Nobody wants a 7:40."
For a fee of $5 per class, students who register on the Web site will receive an automated text-to-speech phone call from Smith's computer, notifying them when an opening is available in the desired class.
Drop/add began April 19. Students can drop or add courses online through Aug. 29 and in person until Aug. 27.
"It uses the same ASU Web site that anyone would," Smith said. "It checks about once a minute and tells you when it's available. It's strictly the notification that you're paying for and it's a fairly safe bet that you'll get into that class."
Political science senior Robert Orozco said that $5 per class was a fair price for the Web site's service.
"If you really need a class, five bucks is nothing," he said. "It's two Coronas at Dos Gringos."
Reach the reporter at christian.palmer@asu.edu.
