With the ability to schedule two semesters ahead of time, students are able to get a firmer grasp of their schedule.

Steve Shablin, registrar of Oakland University, said the process of allowing students to register for two semesters at once began two years ago.

“We started talking about this (the registration process) five to six years ago,” said Mary Beth Snyder, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management said. “We heard that other schools were doing this as a way to encourage students to think ahead to graduation.”

Shablin said both faculty and administration went out to Michigan State University and Grand Valley State University to discuss the success of allowing their students to register a whole year in advance.

“We asked how it was working and did they have had good results from it,” Shablin said.

He said both the administration and faculty brought back a lot of good ideas, and from there they created an implementation team that began working on the concept.

“We were thinking this was a very good retention and graduation initiative,” Snyder said.

In 2012, students were allowed to register for the current summer, fall and winter semesters.

“It’s easier to find faculty for a high demand class in March rather than last minute,” Shablin said.

According to Snyder, retention has bumped 3 percent.

The initiation of the first-year advising center was created following these observations. Along with the new center, freshmen are required to set an appointment with an advisor.

“The freshmen advisers will touch bases with freshmen throughout the year,” Snyder said. “There will be a total of three mandatory advising sessions a year.”

Shablin believes this will eventually become a common practice in all state institutions, but it may be a challenge for those registering to have to plan ahead a lot earlier.

“The Office of the Registrar now requires academic units to submit class plans in June for the following March,” he said.

Shablin said orientation had to revamp the whole process and billing had to realign billing dates and that the overall initiative has been successful.

“We do keep in mind that student schedules change due to work and other things, so we always keep the registration system open,” he said.

Shablin said they also found that it provides an added benefit to academic units because they can identify early what the demand for a course is.

Currently there are 12,583 students registered for the winter semester, a total of 151,045 total credit hours according to the Office of the Registrar.