One of the most important and defining steps that graduate student need to take is the selection of subject or the choice of enrolling for courses. There are many factors that directly or indirectly effect ones decision and I have tried to address a few of them below so as to help those who are in the process.
- TIMELINE
As soon as you receive an admit from a university the first thing one needs to do after accepting is to request for the forthcoming semester’s calendar. In this calendar you’ll be able to find tentative/finalized dates where class registrations begin. Please keep a reminder for that date without miss. - REMAINDER
Not just for registration, also keep reminder for last day of drop out. Also keep reminder for last day of registration as many tend to drop out during that time and if you have missed any course you’d have wished you enroll for, now is the time to check out. - RESEARCH :The basis on which one makes a choice for enrolling matters a lot. Sometimes you might be interested in XYZ subject but that is the poorest thought (with no ongoing research/projects) and vice versa. Hence, it’s important to look at the course syllabus, the teaching professors background. Talking to seniors about it helps. More importantly, one can browse online portals to see if there are any published projects of that subject ( example: for CS candidates they can always check GitHub).
- ASSUMPTIONS
Never assume anything about a course. Always double check and fact check. Sometimes you might know what the subject is about and assume that XYZ tools will be used to teach but that would not be the case at all. - CHOICES
Because people tend to assume and not research about a course, it’s always good to enroll for more subjects than initially thought and drop out later if not interested. - LABS
Sometimes enrolling for those courses to which there is a dedicated lab gives advantage as you are exposed to what is happening around that subject, networking increases and mainly chances of assistantships increases. - PROFESSORS
Sometimes you’d have missed out enrolling at the last moment or seats got filled within minutes due to demand, at this moment mailing professors explaining the same and requesting for extra accommodation helps a lot. - OVERLOADING
Its important to balance, if you plan to enroll for three subject make sure one is on easier end and the other two can be core competent subjects. - INTER-RELATED COURSES
Avoid enrolling for inter-related subjects because many times the same professor would be experienced in both of the related subjects and would cover majority of the concepts. - JOB MARKET
Irrespective of what your interests are always heed to market demands. Of course the US market is huge and there is always scope for many things but this is a factor to look at from a highly detailed level.