Aiming to enhance the capabilities of the Student Affairs Information System and to reduce the tension that accumulates on the elective courses during registrations, we have developed a pre-registration program that named and defined these elective courses as "Critical Courses". This pre-registration program is implemented as a pilot study during 2001 Spring Semester registrations.

Students were defining insufficient criteria when taking some of the critical courses or they were not defining any criteria at all, and they were registering to some of the elective courses on a "first-come-first-served" basis. Therefore, the interactive registration system experienced serious difficulties along with unwanted interruptions during the early hours on the first day of the registrations. These shortcomings necessitated the implementation of the pre-registration program.

Before the commencement of the interactive registration period, pre-registrations to the critical courses were all carried out between January 3^rd and February 7^th, 2001. The students were allowed to register to maximum five critical courses. They were at liberty in registering to different course sections as well as registering to separate critical elective courses. The pre-registration program was accessed both externally and internally. Eventually, student lists were obtained as a result of the random selections, which were carried out three times by the computer among the students that pre-registered themselves to the critical courses. These lists were announced via Internet and the students that appeared on the lists were allowed to take the critical courses they have previously pre-registered themselves to.

The following five elective courses were opened during pre-registrations. A total of 2,707 students participated in the pre-registrations and they registered themselves to a total of 8,177 courses.

The number of the students that registered themselves to courses during pre-registrations was 2-6 times the total capacity of the courses.

A number of students' could/did not register themselves to the elective courses during interactive registrations, despite the fact that they had been randomly selected to the courses they have previously pre-registered themselves to. The reasons are as follows:

The academic status of the student did not allow the student to take this course.
The student did not take the prerequisite of the course before.
The student would be overloaded, if he/she were allowed to take the elective course.
There would be a conflict in the course program of the student, if he/she were allowed to take the elective course.
The student registered himself/herself to alternative elective courses that are not included in the list of the critical elective courses.

We recommend those students, who intend to register themselves to critical courses during registrations, to get the better of their right to choose and to check carefully whether they meet the prerequisites for critical courses and interactive registrations or not.

Even though this is not the most favorable solution for the problem of critical courses in our University, it is a genuine attempt to lessen the troubles of our students during registrations.