Registering for STAT Courses-Sp16

Answers to FAQ when registering for STAT courses

Statistics and related sub-fields of Analytics and Data Science have grown in popularity in recent years, and as such, so have our STAT courses. Most are full by the first day of the semester. The Department of Statistics wishes to offer our STAT courses to students of all disciplines, however, 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 are restricting enrollment for many of our courses during the early registration (i.e., Priority Registration) period each term and capping enrollments below maximum capacity in order to save seats for incoming Statistics students.

So that students may anticipate if/when they might be able to register for a certain STAT course for the upcoming semester, we have created this site to explain the restrictions for STAT courses. Please understand that we are not normally in a position to make exceptions and give overrides to students who are not included in the restrictions or to put students into full sections.

We do not maintain waitlists for STAT courses.


Registration Timeline

Apr 4-Apr 29: Priority Registration exists for Stat, Stat/CS, and other majors who are specifically required to take certain upper-level STAT courses.

Tuesday, May 3: Priority Registration ends.  The restrictions will be removed beginning on this day. The restrictions will come off one course at a time throughout the day. We can not anticipate when a specific course will have its restriction lifted. Once the restriction for a course is lifted, any student in any major can sign up for courses with remaining seats as seen on Enterprise/Self-Service.

Once the number of remaining seats reach 0, the class is full. Additional seats are not made available to non-majors


STAT Course Specifics

STAT 427: Statistical Consulting requires Instructor Approval. You can read full descriptions and indicate your interest of either or both of the two sections by visiting the following links. The deadline for submitting your interest is Monday, November 9 (extended for Section 2 until Tuesday, Decemeber 1).

STAT 430: Topics in Applied Statistics changes topics each semester. You can take STAT 430 as often as you like as long as the topics are distinct. In Spring 2016, we are offering three sections:

  • Advanced Data Science, taught by Prof. R. Brunner. If you have taken Prof. Brunner’s INFO 490-RB course, you CAN also earn credit for this section of STAT 430. In fact, Prof. Brunner’s Sp16 version of STAT 430 (and INFO 490) is the second semester follow-up to the current Fa15 version of INFO 490. As such, this semester’s INFO 490 is a prerequisite for next semester STAT 430. The second course builds on the first, which introduces github, Unix command line, databases and SQL, and (most importantly), the Python programming language. If you feel you can sufficiently master the material prior to class, you may enroll. But you will be on your own and there will be no assistance provided on basic Python concepts. As an aid to help you determine your eligibility and possibly prepare, the entire first course is freely available online here (excluding assignments and solutions). Students should not enroll in STAT 430 unless they have met the prerequisite. Stat majors may take the INFO 490-RB2 section in Sp16 and have it count toward the plus-4 STAT 4xx electives, but enrolling in STAT 430 is preferred.
  • Stochastic Processes, taught by Prof. A. Stepanov. A stochastic process is a random process that represents the evolution of some system over time. The course is aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. Topics include discrete-time Markov chains, random walks, continuous-time Markov chains, Poisson processes, birth-and-death processes, renewal processes, queues, Brownian motion (Wiener process), and Ito’s lemma.
  • Basics of Statistical Learning, taught by Prof. D. Dalpiaz. This course introduces machine learning techniques for prediction, classification, and clustering. There is an emphasis on resampling methods in model building, especially cross validation. Topics include model selection, nonparametric regression, logistic regression, decision trees, support vector machines, dimension reduction and cluster analysis. A course in linear regression, such as STAT 420 or STAT 425, is a prerequisite.

STAT 480: Data Science Foundations (D. Glosemeyer) is one of our newest STAT 4xx electives focusing on Big Data applications in statistics. It does indeed count toward the requirements for the major and the minor, even though it has not yet formally been added to our Program of Study. If you took the section of STAT 430 in Sp15 covering the same topic, you cannot also earn credit for STAT 480.

STAT 458 is a crosslisted rubric for the Animal Science course ANSC 448. It does not count toward the requirements for any Stat major.


Additional Notes addressing FAQ

Concurrent degree seekers and triple majors (you should know who you are), if your current residency is in another college or Statistics is not your primary or secondary major, you are boxed out of the restriction. We still consider you a Stat major (because you are) even if the system can’t see it. Please contact stat-office@illinois.edu with your specific course and section requests so that we can help you.

For those looking to add Stat or Stat/CS as a major, until you formally change your major, you are still considered a non-major and we cannot provide overrides or otherwise assist you in getting into STAT courses. You should try to register for the STAT courses you need beginning Tuesday, May 3. The next curriculum change period when you can add Stat or Stat/CS begins Monday, August 15. If you become a Stat or Stat/CS major and contact the Undergraduate Advisor (David Unger, dunger@illinois.edu) by the first day of class (Monday, August 22), we can assist you with getting into the class(es) you need to make appropriate progress.

If the course you want is closed, that means it is full to instructional capacity. We cannot make an exception to provide an override or add an additional seat. The best thing to do is to check the course often and watch for someone else to drop. Dropped seats may become available for you to add at any time.

If the course you want has seats in a graduate section but is full in the undergraduate section, it means the course is full except for the graduate seats. We cannot make an exception to provide an override or add an additional seat. These seats are specifically meant for new incoming graduate students, and the university will not move them to the undergraduate side until they’ve confirmed that each new graduate student has completed registration. After they have all registered (often not until the end of the first week or even second week of the semester), the university reviews what is left and may make available the leftover seats to the undergraduate side, if any exist. The Statistics Department does not know exactly when the redistribution of unused graduate seats will happen, but historically it happens during Week 2 of the semester.

We as faculty and staff do not maintain waitlists for our courses. We recommend that you continue to watch the registration site on Self-Service (Enterprise) for someone to drop and then add that seat on your own.


If you have any additional questions, please contact stat-office@illinois.edu.

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