Part 2

No. 6 What do I have to bid for?

It is important for every student to know what CUs he/she must take to satisfy all the requirements set by the school before he/she can take a secondary degree or secondary major and to graduate.

The first thing to do is to read up on your school’s handbook. Go to Oasis> Study> Advisement & Curriculum> Handbook

There you will find details on what and how many CUs you have to take under each course area to complete the entire curriculum.

If you are still confused, go to Oasis> Study> Advisement & Curriculum> Advisement. Mandatory courses are listed so you can be sure that you would not miss out anything. Be sure to note that this list does not include the mandatory courses you have to take to fulfill your majors, as they are different for each student.

You might find the planned courses function to be useful in helping you keep track of courses you are planning to take up in the future. They also provide a detailed write up for every course to help you understand the gist of the course, course pre-requisites and what course areas you could fulfill by taking the course. Just add the course to your planned courses list and click on “details”. You can delete it from the list later.

No. 7 Make use of the information and features of BOSS

It’s the first time you are bidding and you are not sure how much to bid for a course. You might want to have an anchoring point to decide how much more or less to bid for a course. Go to Oasis> Study> BOSS> View BOSS Past Result for reference sake. You should also check this section out between windows to check how much students bid in the previous window and the number of vacancies left.  This is usually where students camp at while strategizing for the next bid.

You would soon find that you have a talent in generating weird numbers. Numbers such as e$19.11, e$20.99, e$20.01 and e$18.88 would soon be familiar to you. Generate the numbers wisely and you should have no problems getting your desired courses.

With the priority system, some students will not get to bid for some courses in the first two windows. Therefore, they run the risk of not getting the courses they wished for. As advised earlier, bid for other courses that can fulfill the same or other requirements as back up. You can bid for up to 5.5 courses (including those you have successfully gotten). Always bid for as many courses as you are allowed, to cushion you against having nothing at all. Here’s an example:

Say Sally is an IS student but she wants to bid for a course called, Financial Accounting 101. As an IS student, she is not allowed to bid for Accountancy (ACC) courses until BOSS 1B starts. She is planning to do 4 courses this term of which 3 are IS courses. What she would do is to bid for that 3 courses first and wait for her turn to bid the ACC course. What I will advise her to do is to bid for 5 courses in the first window so that she would have 2 courses to act as a back up for any failed bids or if the vacancies of the ACC course are filled up even before her turn. If she successfully got all 5 courses, she does not need to drop any until she has successfully gotten her ACC course (Even if it essentially means bidding 6 courses when the max is 5.5). This is the power of a feature in BOSS explained below.

A very useful feature BOSS provides is D.I.C.E (Drop If Course Exceeds)

When a student submits bids for more than 5.5 CUs, BOSS will prompt the student to indicate the course that he/she wishes to drop should all the bids be successful. This is known as DICE - Drop If Course Exceeds. In most instances, if a student is successful in all his/her bids, BOSS will automatically drop the course that had been indicated as “first to be dropped”.

If Sally chose to D.I.C.E an IS elective if her bid for the ACC course is successful, the elective would be dropped automatically and the ACC course would be added to her curriculum. Once she has safely gotten all her desired courses, she can drop all the other back up courses with no penalty.

No. 9 Advices

I truly hope that the above information has helped you in getting better prepared for BOSS. Before I end this entry, I will leave you with a few advices:

·       Manage your e$ but don’t be too stingy over a few dollars. It can help you get a much wanted course and a few dollars would not mean much to you by the time your e$ accumulates to hundreds

·       The lesser people you bid with, the higher the chance of getting your course. The system fills up vacancies with the higher bidders. If your bid (along with your 5 friends who bid with you) is the next highest but there is only one vacancy left, you will not be offered a place because there are 5 others with the same bid. Also, with more people, you have fewer choices in terms of lesson timings and you might end up having to bid a more popular timing for your friends when you don’t need to. Be practical.

·       Always bid for as many courses as you are allowed to and D.I.CE to secure the number of courses you want to do for that term. You do not want to end up having only 2 courses for the entire term.

·       Find out about the Professors teaching the same course. Professors make a huge difference to the popularity of classes under the course. If the Professor is too “coveted” by students, you know you would not stand a chance unless you bid high. There are other Professors who are good and hence, spending too much on a “hot” Professor might not be worth it.

·       Always think before you bid. Look at the minimum bids in the previous window, the number of vacancies left for classes under the course and the nature of the course itself. Strategize before you bid.