If your college student tells you that she is ”course shopping”, you may wonder just what she is doing. If your student lets you know that he is dropping a course, you may worry that he won’t be taking enough credits. If your student tells you that she is making an enrollment change, you might wonder what kind of change she is indicating. If all of this happens in the first two or three weeks of a new semester, it is part of the normal movement that often happens in courses as a new term begins. It may be helpful, as a college parent, for you to understand the Add/Drop or Enrollment Change period.
Most colleges have a period at the beginning of each semester during which students can drop courses from their schedule and/or add new courses to their schedule (if space is available) without penalty. There is no financial cost, and courses dropped will not appear on the student’s transcript; they simply go away. The length of this period will depend on the policies of the institution, but generally may be anywhere from one to three weeks. Sometimes students may have a slightly longer period to drop courses than to add courses. Again, depending on the procedures of the institution, courses may be added or dropped online, or students may need to obtain signatures of instructors and/or their advisor to make a change.