SOLAR 2008 Discussion

Discuss SOLAR here. Questions, tips, frustrations, feedback.

About MUGSI and SOLAR information: click here to visit Registrar's website.


SOLAR's hours (see here), state that it is open 24 hours (except for a short downtime at 3am).

For fourth years that have been in Solar today.. are we able to choose the core/lab/tut times? or just the courses?

yes, there is a column to select tutorials/labs

Update: So far when I picked a course that had 2 possible tutorials, the column for selecting which tutorial you wanted didn't come up (it only let me pick the CORE). So far I haven't been able to pick tutorials.

So I'm concluding that they will automatically assign you your tutorial/lab sections

Did you get to decide the what term (1, 2 or 3) to take the courses or is it automatically selected for you?

On the McMaster Time Table it tells you what term they are offered. Unless they are offered both terms you don't have a choice. It's not often that a course is offered more than once a year.

Also, like Chad said, they will slot you into your tutorial times by auto. If you have a problem with the times, look up the Master TimeTable and check what other times are available and discuss with the TA/ Prof if you can switch. Sometimes they don't like it if you switch because they have a set number of students per tutorial but if you make a good case (so saying that 10:30 is just far too early for you won't fly) they should be able to change you around.

Although we were automatically assigned tutorials/labs last year, once SOLAR reopened, I was able to switch things around to make a more appealing timetable for myself.

Looks like tutorials/labs will be automatically assigned to you when it creates your timetable/calendar in August ... then once you have then assigned you can most likely go in and change up the ones they assigned you if you wish.

Solar tells me I don't have the pre-req's for GEO 2GI3.
Am I reading the calendar wrong?
If it says
"One of MATH 1AA3, 1B03, 1D03, SOC SCI 2J03, STATS 1CC3."
That means you only need one of those courses from that list, right?
I have credit in STATS 1CC3, so I don't know what's wrong...

Who should I contact about this?

As it stands, yes it looks like you have the requirements.

However, I suggest you contact the department the course is under. They would be able to give you the best insight.

According to the 2008 calendar:

http://registrar.mcmaster.ca /calen...08/sec_657.htm

It says:

Prerequisite: One of MATH 1AA3, 1B03, 1D03, SOC SCI 2J03, STATS 1CC3
Prerequisite (beginning 2009-2010): One of ISCI 1A24, MATH 1A03, 1AA3, 1B03, 1D03, 1LS3, SOC SCI 2J03, STATS 1CC3, 2B03

And both of those say STATS 1CC3, so you should be good.

The only thing I see that could be messing you up is that the page lists these sections as 'sub sections' of GEO. So I was thinking maybe somewhere you had to register to be in the "GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS (GIS) AND SPATIAL ANALYSIS" sub section before you can take that course... but that doesn't pan out either because at the top it says "Students can elect to take some or all of the upper level courses from different subfields"

Is there anything to be done about how ridiculously slow SOLAR is?

I dread the time of course registration. I'm in Honours Political Science, so most of my classes are "electives", if you will. Each year, I spend at least an hour trying to log on to MUGSI and SOLAR, and another hour ontop of that trying to choose my classes.

Why is SOLAR so slow? I know there's a lot of people using it at the same time, but that's because there are so many students. Isn't there anything they can do to make it run faster/let more students on at once?

I have to register tonight and I'm not looking forward to it.

Have they done anything? No. Will they...no.

For them it's functional.

I hate SOLAR. It's almost impossible to get the classes I want. I try almost every from the day it opens for me until it closes, then all the way into September.
Most of my classes from last year, I got into in the middle of September.

:(

i always go on at 11:59 and get all the courses I want within 20 mins maxx