CS Course Restrictions & Enrollment Caps

The popularity of CS courses has grown dramatically in the past few years. Most are now full by the beginning of each semester. While the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science sincerely wishes to give students from across campus the opportunity to take CS courses, we have to ensure that students who are specifically required to take these courses can do so when they need them in order to graduate. For that reason, we have been restricting enrollment for many of our courses during the early registration period each term and capping enrollments below maximum capacity in order to save seats for incoming Computer Science students and those who find out at the last minute that they need a certain course. The Current Registration Restrictions, linked below, lists our restrictions for the most immediate term, and indicates if/when we might release those restrictions, and if/when we might release any seats we have held back for various reasons. Note that as we work to ensure as many seats as is practical for certain courses, we might move courses into different (usually larger) rooms well after early registration has begun. If we are able to add seats or sections to a course after major restrictions have been lifted, the school reserves the right to temporarily place major and program restrictions back on these sections to allow CS major and Engineering tuition students the ability to make changes to their schedules. The dates these restrictions will be removed will be shared on the CS Undergraduate Advising Piazza.

Computer Science Course Restrictions for Spring 2025

Current Registration Restrictions

Students should follow our Undergraduate Advising PIAZZA: piazza.com/illinois/other/csadvising
Piazza is the location where the department will announce if there are additional seats being released on a day not specified within this document.

**Prerequisites are enforced for nearly all undergraduate sections of 400-level CS courses. Plan accordingly.

Some seats will be reserved for incoming graduate, first year, and transfer students. The instructor and advisors cannot give an override for these reserved seats.
If a section says "Closed," it is full at that time and we will not be providing overrides even if Student Self-Service lists remaining seats. Many CS courses have multiple sections/crosslists, which share all of the seats for the entire course. If one section says there are remaining seats, those seats are likely occupied by students in another section. To know actual seats remaining in a cross-listed course, you must look at the XL remaining number in Student Self-Service.
For online sections you must read the course notes in the online UIUC class schedule in Course Explorer to find out if you are eligible to register for the section. (This includes City Scholar sections).
The CS Academic Office will not create or manage wait-lists.
Students in CS majors have specific sections to register for in CS 124, 128, 173, 225, & 233. All other students must register for the non-major sections, no exceptions.
For CS students to register for a CS 397 Individual Study, CS 497 Team Project or CS 499 Senior Thesis go to the following link and complete the form after speaking with faculty: https://my.siebelschool.illinois.edu/IndStudy.
If registering for CS 397, CS 497, or CS 499, be sure your credit hours are correct! If they are not, you can change the credit hours in the registration system before the add deadline. Email undergrad@siebelschool.illinois.edu for assistance, if needed.
Additional information about CS 397, CS 497, and CS 499 approval is under the policies & procedures page here: https://siebelschool.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate/policies-and-procedures.
CS 400-level courses (unless otherwise listed) If the course is cross-listed with another department the CS Section will be restricted to students in CS programs and the cross-listed section to those within the cross-listed department, until restrictions are lifted.
Grad-level courses for undergrads: If the course has both a 3- & 4-hour sections, 4-hour sections are generally restricted to graduate-level students. Any undergraduate wanting the graduate-level 4-hour section or a 500-level course must receive approval from the instructor and department. To obtain this, students complete the following petition Undergrad Application for Access to CS Grad Sections: https://my.siebelschool.illinois.edu/ugpetitions/. To be fully approved to register a graduate course or section, students need approval from the course instructor and from the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. Because graduate students often register later, the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science will not begin reviewing submitted requests until 3 weeks prior to the start of the semester, at the earliest. Requests should be submitted the Thursday before classes begin and anything after will be subject to delays and possibly a late course change (add/drop) form. You must complete the petition for any consideration into a grad level CS course. If the course has an undergraduate section you must have a seat in the undergrad section until the school reviews the requests. If the course is filled with graduate students and the course sections appear "Closed," the class is full to capacity and we cannot add more students. Instructor approval does not guarantee department approval. If you are requesting access to a graduate section of a summer course, please email instructor approval directly to undergrad@siebelschool.illinois.edu before the start of the summer term for full consideration.
Overlapping courses (Time conflict): Student Self-Service will not let students register for classes with meeting times that overlap. However, the CS Undergraduate Advising Office can sometimes provide an override if at least one of the courses is a CS course.
The process of how to request a Time Conflict Override has changed. If you do not follow the instructions given, your request will not be processed. Here are the new instructions.

The Time Conflict Override portal is currently open. This portal will close at the end of the first week of the semester
Automatic Prerequisite Enforcement: We will continue to enforce prerequisites for our 100-, 200- and 300-level coursework as we have for the past few semesters. We will also now be enforcing prerequisites on many 400-level CS electives for undergraduates, as well. Students who have transfer or proficiency credit that is not yet in the system should fill out a prerequisite override request, providing evidence of their credit. Students who have permission from an instructor to meet a prerequisite that they don’t have credit for will need to include an email from the instructor or screenshot to document that permission.
You will not be granted an override for missing coursework used for a previous prerequisite override.

Grad Students

CS GRAD STUDENTS: Most CS 400-level classes are now available to register for 3 or 4 credit hours, if the 3 credit option is available for graduate students. Review info on Registrar page for updating variable credit hours (https://registrar.illinois.edu/registration/registration-process/variable-credit-hours/). CS 498 courses will have separate sections for 3 (if available) and 4 credit hours.
Non-CS GRADS: CS will open GRAD seats to all GRADS on January 10, 2025.
Non-CS GRAD students wanting 100, 200, or 300 level CS courses must submit a request here: (TBD: check back in a few weeks). Any request submitted after 9 am on the 10^th day (the add deadline) will not be reviewed/approved for the current semester.

Courses Offered on Coursera

Read this Important Information on how to access your CS Course Hosted on Coursera

Spring 2025 Courses offered on Coursera available to on-campus students include:

CS 412
CS 427
CS 435
CS 437
CS 441
CS 445
CS 447
CS 463
CS 498 Cloud Computing Applications
CS 598 Deep Learning for Healthcare

**Courses offered in the Coursera platform cannot be added (section changed) after the 10 day add deadline.