Last Friday's senior registration was the most efficient registration on the books, according to data collected by University technology officials.
The success, they said, comes as a relief after malfunctions in the ACES Web system last spring allowed some seniors to log in inadvertently to other students' accounts during seniors' registration window.
This year, by 7:05 a.m., 336 seniors were able to register, the fastest registration the Office of Information and Technology has seen to date.
"We were very happy with the way it worked out," said Chris Cramer, the University information technology security officer.
Last March, OIT received eight official complaints, and many more informal comments, from seniors who logged on to ACES Web and entered other students' accounts. Officials said that most seniors experiencing the structural errors immediately logged off and attempted to access the correct account so they could register, easing concerns that the erred log-ins pose serious threats to student privacy.
"Essentially none of the students [were] overly upset [last spring]," Cramer said. "There were one or two students that the registrar needed to work with but in general everyone was very understanding."
Unlike registration windows for other classes, which are staggered and facilitate between three hundred and four hundred students at any given time, the senior registration window is used simultaneously by the entire class, which translates into 1500 eligible students potentially trying to register at once.
Consequently, measures have been taken to ensure that OIT is better equipped to respond to any error log-ins that may occur in the future.
"We are capturing a lot more diagnostics this go around," said Chris Meyer, director of information technology at OIT. "We are logging a lot more information when students access ACES."
Although OIT and the Office of the Registrar conducted class registration simulations and researched the formal reports, Cramer said they were unable to pinpoint exactly what caused the system errors last spring. Several precautionary adjustments have been made, although most are unobservable to a student-user.
"Essentially we applied a lot of minor fixes or 'patches' to the hardware and software," Cramer said. "No specific patch was supposed to be the cure for the smoking gun, but some combination of not having those patches may have been related."
He added that the slightly faster registration can probably be attributed to the random nature of users accessing a system associated with student log-ins and is not a result of administrative alterations.
Seniors generally expressed satisfaction with this year's registration.
"It went fine," said senior Lori Brockman. "I got up at 6:45 [a.m.] and registered at 7. Registration only took me around 2 minutes."
Other seniors said that registration was inconvenient, but none of the inconveniences cited concerned technical difficulties.
"Registering at 7 in the morning is like a bad dream," said senior Mike Connolly.
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