91ÖÆƬ³§

Login to  using your Bowdoin username and password. Polaris can be accessed anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Click on the “Registration” link in the hamburger menu when it opens on the left side of the screen.

“Registration Status” is located on the "Prepare for Registration" page.

In order to register, students must see three green checkmarks on this page.

If there are any yellow warning symbols, those will need to be resolved before a student can register. If a student has a Hold other than an Advisor Hold or Enrollment Form Hold they can see who placed the Hold(s) by looking at the "Holds" tab within the “My Academic Profile” portlet in Polaris. If a "Registration Hold" is shown, the student must contact the office that placed the hold in order to resolve it.

To add a course, a student can go to the “Find Classes” tab and type a search term and press ENTER.  Scroll to view the list of available courses.  Clicking the “Add” button will move a course to a student’s “Summary” area.  

Or, a student can go to the “Enter CRN tab” to enter one or more CRNs. Clicking the “Add to Summary” button will add the classes to a student’s summary in the bottom right corner.

91ÖÆƬ³§ can only request up to 4 one-credit courses or up to a maximum of 5 credits. For example, a student can request 4 one-credit courses and 2 half-credit course or 4 half-credit course and 3 one-credit courses.

To find a CRN for a class, use the Class Finder.  Within Class Finder, the CRN is shown in a rectangular button and will be different every semester. If you click on the CRN button within Class Finder, it will display the full description and registration preferences of a course.

The student can use the drop down button in the Action column to drop a course from the “Summary” section by selecting the “Drop Class” option and then clicking on the “Submit” button below.

Polaris does real-time checking for eligibility for all requested classes (e.g., prerequisites, placements, class standing, major/minor status, course co-requisites, time conflicts, closed/full class, and so on).

The Advisor Hold is in place to help ensure that students are consulting with their faculty advisors about their curricular plans and potential class schedule. 91ÖÆƬ³§ should reach out to their faculty advisor early in the registration cycle to arrange to meet with them to begin that conversation. For students currently studying away, that will need to be a virtual meeting or email exchange.

91ÖÆƬ³§ may submit course requests before the Advisor Hold is lifted. However, in order for Round 1 course requests to be processed, every student's faculty advisor must release the Advisor Hold in Polaris before the deadline. The times which each round of registration open and close are final and normally no exceptions are made. 91ÖÆƬ³§ are strongly encouraged to check the "My Courses" section of Polaris before the close of each round of registration to make sure their course selections are displaying correctly and all holds are resolved. 

If a student is not eligible for a class, an error message will appear. Most error messages are located up in the top right corner of the screen.

91ÖÆƬ³§ are advised to contact professors early for any overrides (e.g., waiving pre-requisites or co-requisites) or courses that require instructor permission so that the student will have enough time to request these courses after the instructor has submitted the Instructor Registration Permission/Overrides request.

For courses that have a lab/discussion section linked to them, students will need to request both at the same time (but the order of placement in the boxes does not matter). Classes and labs have separate CRNs.

Please note that in some semesters, linked labs may not be utilized.

For courses with multiple labs, students can only put one lab choice. If a student does not get their preferred lab choice, the registration program will attempt to enroll them in another lab that does not conflict with their other courses. If a student prefers not to be in the course because of the lab s/he received, they will be able to drop the course/lab during Add/Drop 1. But, once the course/lab is dropped, they will not have the ability to re-enroll in the course if all other labs are full.

For courses that require Instructor Approval, students must obtain approval BEFORE the course can be added or requested.

For courses that have a co-requisite, the student needs to add them at the same time, or the one with the co-req second. For example, a student cannot add Dance 3212 without first adding (or simultaneously adding) Dance 3211.

Once the student has submitted their requested courses, they have completed that round of registration. Until the Registrar’s deadline for that round, they are able to change their requested courses, assuming they have talked to their advisor about the changes.

Before submitting, the summary panel will look like this:

Once requests are submitted, the summary panel will look like this:

As soon as the student has requested courses, the courses will display in the "My Courses" portlet under the "Next Term" tab. The "Status" column will show that these courses have been "Requested." 

It is the student's responsibility to check that there requested schedule appears as they expect it to in this portal PRIOR to the close of each registration round.

Additional courses may be added in Round 2. In Add/Drop I and Add/Drop II, the student may drop and/or add courses. Because Add/Drop I and Add/Drop II are first-come, first-serve, the student will see their courses change immediately in the "Next Term" tab, after s/he requests a course and refresh their browser.

During the Add/Drop I and Add/Drop II, instructors need to give permission for a student to add ANY course. Instructor permissions and overrides are shown in the “Prepare for Registration” section of the Registration website.

If a course can be taken as either a standard letter grade or Credit/D/Fail, students can change the grading option using the grade mode drop down in their “Summary and Schedule” panel, at the top of the screen.

Once the grade mode change has been selected from the drop down menu, the student scrolls to the bottom of the page and clicks on "Submit."

The new grade mode will now display in the "My Courses" portlet in the "Student" portal tab.

This option is available starting in Add/Drop II.

To log out, select the chevron to the right of your name in the header and choose “Sign Out.”