Class Capacity Overrides
Seat Availability Notification
The Mathematics Department does not give capacity overrides for courses numbered under 500, with the exception of MATH 300. Instead, we use a notification list to inform students when we open more seats for a course—whether it is for an existing section or for a new section. After those on the list are alerted of seat openings for a course, the seats become available on a first come, first served basis - whoever registers first for an open seat will get it. We cannot reserve any seats for individual students. It is therefore important to regularly check your USC email. You should also continue to monitor Self-Service Carolina in the event a seat becomes available because a student drops the course. Please be aware that even if you add your name to the notification list, there is no guarantee that more seats will be opened.
Prerequisite Overrides
Temporary Prerequisite Override
If you have taken an AP Calculus or IB Mathematics (higher level) test and are waiting for the scores to come to USC to satisfy a prerequisite or if you are waiting for course credit from another College or University in order to satisfy a prerequisite, then complete the prerequisite override form. Faculty can not give overrides of any kind for any reason for any class.
FAQs
There is no need to indicate the section you need. We will notify you whenever we create seats for a course, including if we create additional seats in the section you happen to need, whatever it is. When we notify you, you should also be sure to check whether there are new sections created of the course you want that will fit into your schedule.
We cannot accommodate this. The instructor that is assigned to a section can change or switch at any time prior to the semester or summer session starting. We try to indicate early on for some of the sections who the instructors will be, but there are a number of reasons that the instructors may need to change. We cannot assign a student to a particular instructor.
This is done the same way. Fill out the notification list indicated in the first question above. The only difference is that we may give you an override into the requested course and contact you directly. Note that an override does not register you for the course; you will still need to do that yourself.
We only notify students for courses when we create seats in them. There are other reasons seats can become available. In particular, if a student drops a section, which is out of our control, a seat will become available, but we will not know and will not notify you.
Looks can be deceiving. Sometimes caps (the number of seats available in a course) are lowered (for example, to help us balance enrollments in different sections). This will cause an appearance that overrides were given. Also, enrollments in courses taught through the South Carolina Honors College or the Opportunities Scholars' Program are not handled through the Mathematics Department, even though they may be mathematics courses. We do not control how registration is handled for these, and overrides for students in these programs may occur for these courses.