University enrollment is the process by which students enroll in classes. There are two periods for enrollment at Cornell Tech: Pre-Enrollment and Regular Enrollment.
Please follow your program’s academic requirements on your program curriculum sheet. If you are having difficulty enrolling in a required class for your program requirement, please email Student & Academic Affairs!
The Cornell Tech Academic Calendar is here for your reference. Please note for Fall 2021 we will adhere to the Ithaca Academic Calendar!
Fall 2021 Pre-Enrollment for New Students Begins on July 21st at 9:00am (ET) through July 22nd at 4:00pm (ET). Please be mindful of your time zone as you plan for enrollment! A 2nd enrollment period for both new and continuing students will be open starting August 17th at 9:00am ET through September 9th at 11:59pm (ET).
Add Deadline: September 9th at 11:59pm
Adding a class after September 9th will only be considered in extreme circumstances and requires permission of the faculty via an add/drop form.
Drop Deadline: October 21st at 11:59pm
Dropping a semester-long class after October 21st results in a W on your transcript and requires permission of the faculty via an add/drop form.
Last Day to Change Grading Basis: October 21st at 11:59pm
LAW Course Add/Drop Deadline:
Law Courses: September 8th at Noon (12pm) (ET)
Module courses are courses that meet only for 4-5 weeks during the semester. They have different add/drop dates according to when they meet.
Johnson (NBAY) Courses: NBAY courses have varied start/end dates, the last date to add and drop will be according to when classes meet either in the first half or the second half of the term.
First Half: Add/Drop Dates: August 17th at 8:00am thru September 2nd at 11:59pm.
Second Half: Add/Drop Dates: August 17th at 8:00am thru September 9th at 11:59pm with an additional Add/Drop period beginning October 20th at 8:00am thru October 27th at 11:59pm.
After the deadline date, students can drop the course only with Faculty Permission and will be issued a “W” on their transcript via an add/drop form. To drop without a W, please do so before the drop deadline date.
TECH Module Courses: (i.e. TECH Prefix Electives) the last date to add/drop will be indicated in the notes field on the Class Roster closer to Regular Enrollment. After this date, students can drop the course only with Faculty Permission and will be issued a “W” on their transcript via add/drop form. To drop without a W, please do so before the drop deadline date.
For any arranged courses, students can drop the course after the first class session but BEFORE the start of its second class meeting. After the course meets for the 2nd time, only extreme circumstances will only be considered with faculty permission to drop the course.
Please follow your program’s academic requirements on your program curriculum sheet. If you are having difficulty enrolling in a required class for your program requirement, please email Student & Academic Affairs!
Instructions how to add, drop, swap courses are available here!
An add/drop form will be available after regular enrollment (the webpage form link will be shared at that time) if you require assistance or permission with adjustments to your schedule.
The Class Roster is where you will be able to see specific class information at that time (you can filter by Location: Cornell Tech).
Please also review the Class Enrollment FAQ’s as this will provide answers how to use the Registration System (Student Center) along with other helpful tidbits!
Some classes may be cross-listed across different major disciplines such as the following. If you are trying to enroll in a cross-listed class, please make sure you enroll in the section according to your major (CS students should enroll in the CS section, ORIE should enroll in ORIE section).
Students who are a major discipline different that the cross-listing, you will be able to enroll in the Parent Section of the class. See below for information this semester:
CS 5785/ORIE 5750/ECE 5414
INFO 6410/CS 5682 HCI & Design
INFO 5345/CS 5424/ECE 5413 Interactive Device Design
INFO 5340/CS 5650 Virtual and Augmented Reality
INFO 7060/LAW 7179 Digital Life Research Seminar
ORIE 5380/CS 5727 Optimization Methods
If you would like to enroll in MBA or LAW classes, you may notice that you may not be able to enroll (or drop) yourself in the course. Please be mindful that these courses are first prioritized for MBA & LAW students to enroll in, however you can waitlist yourself for the course to be considered to be enrolled. At a later time closer to the start of classes, the MBA or LAW Registrar will notify you if/when you are moved off the wait list. If you have any issues please email Student & Academic Affairs to request being put on the wait list.
Please be mindful some classes are arranged so that there is a equitable distribution of seats for enrollment across majors. This is to ensure there a diverse enrollment of students in that particular course. Once all the seats have been filled for one major, a wait list automatically opens for the entire class even though the course may say “Open” for enrollment and there are seats open. The error message you may see looks like below:
Error: You are unable to enroll in this class at this time. Available seats are reserved. You do not meet the enrollment group criteria to enroll in this class at this time.
In this situation, add yourself to the waitlist for the course. Student & Academic Affairs will review waitlists on an ongoing basis during the Regular Enrollment period. More information about waitlists are below!
Once a class has reached maximum enrollment for either the course itself or for a reserve major groups’ seating limit, a waitlist opens. Although it may look as though seats are open if you see the course listed with a green circle as “open”, the class is indeed locked from auto-enrolling any more students (and you will not be able to self-enroll). Often times there is already a list of students on the existing waitlist. We understand this may be a tedious process, but you must place yourself on the waitlist so that we know how best to manage the system.
If and when seating becomes available, we will manually enroll you into the class. You will be emailed if and when you are enrolled. Please be mindful this is a manual process and may take us a bit of time to process on a daily basis. We greatly appreciate your patience during this time!
Please be mindful you are not guaranteed to be enrolled in a class if you are on a wait list. Additionally, wait lists can become FULL! In this case, we still CANNOT enroll you in the class or add you onto the full waitlist because the capacity is reached. You will need to try again at later time to see if a spot becomes available.
Student & Academic Affairs will review wait lists on an ongoing basis during the entire Regular Enrollment period.
To enroll in the class:
4. Proceed to Step 2-3 to process enrollment!
TECH 5900 Product Studio and TECH 5910 Preparing for Studio will not be open during pre-enrollment. Students will be able to self-enroll via permission codes (which will be issued in mid-August) for Regular Enrollment.
2nd year Jacobs Students are required to self-enroll in INFO 7900 for their Specialization Project. When enrolling, you must enter the credit load as 6 units (credits). You need to update to this credit load manually during the enrollment process– please check to make sure you are enrolled in 6 credits if you already enrolled in this class!
All students will be in section 601T under Deborah Estrin!
Business Fundamentals is a prerequisite to taking any business (courses with NBAY prefix) electives in Fall or Spring (The only exceptions are the classes Design Thinking and Introduction to Entrepreneurial Finance & Valuation which students can take without taking Business Fundamentals). Some students may be approved for a waiver from the class depending on previous coursework taken.
Waivers will be granted to students with:
– a prior business degree (e.g., B.B.A., M.B.A.)
– a Business minor completed
– a substantial amount and range (of topics) of college courses/credits earned specifically from an academic business department (courses taken through an economics, engineering, or statistics department are not considered). This determination is made by the administration and the decision is final.
On Monday July 26th, we will send out information regarding how to apply for a waiver for TECH 5310 Business Fundamentals for the Fall term. This application will only be available for apply through July 30th, and will only have one review period for this entire academic year (there is no review period/application in Spring), so please make sure to apply when it is sent out on Monday! LATE SUBMISSIONS WILL NOT BE REVIEWED! For now, please self-enroll or if needed waitlist in Business Fundamentals even if you are planning to apply for a waiver to secure a position in the class just in case!
INDIVIDUAL COURSE INSTRUCTORS CANNOT OTHERWISE WAIVE THIS REQUIREMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT WRITE TO THEM. If you are unsure whether you have a qualifying degree, and think you might want to take NBAY classes, we recommend registering for a section of Business Fundamentals this fall – it will not be offered in the spring.
If you are planning in taking more credits beyond your program’s 20 credit limit, please apply for a credit approval to take additional credits by emailing your Fall course list (required + electives) and the additional courses/credit amount you are interested in to Mukti Khaire at mvk34@cornell.edu between August 3rd-5th. If approved, you will be able to self-enroll up to your approved credit limit during Regular Enrollment.
To check your registration status, log in to Student Essentials and view your “Registration Status” at the top of the page.
Please also review the Class Enrollment FAQ’s as this will provide answers how to use the Registration System (Student Center) along with other helpful tidbits!
There are several different types of holds – some are informational and must be completed for graduation, and some are immediate and prevent current semester registration. Your Holds are listed at the top right of the page when logged in to Student Essentials. Click on “more information” for complete details including steps to resolve a hold.
To view both current and archived historical course offerings/descriptions, you may review the course catalog on courses.cornell.edu
To download your semester’s class schedule to your personal calendar, please log in to the Scheduler page of the Class Roster to import your schedule! Instructions on how to use this feature are provided on the “Using Scheduler” tool.
Please be mindful once you download the calendar, it will not update automatically if any changes are made thereafter (you will need to re-download the calendar after updates are implemented).