Registration FAQs

Each academic department handles their own “departmental clearance” to control the registration of specific courses or course sections. If a section number ends in ‘D’, you’ll need to contact the department to request permission to add the course.

Before requesting D-clearance, verify that you satisfy the prerequisites for the course and there are no time conflicts between it and your other courses.  These will create errors in OASIS whether or not the D-clearance is granted.

Webreg does not have built-in wait list functions, and academic departments can’t enroll individual students in courses.  If there is an open seat in a course section, any student with access to Webreg may enroll themselves.  Seats will change hands often and with increasing rapidity leading into each new semester, all the way up to Friday of Week 3.  Students trying to get a seat in a full section need to watch Web Registration closely.

The only mechanism departments have to control enrollment in full sections is D-clearance, which limits the pool of students who can take open seats if they become available.  We often use this for courses in which all sections are at capacity.  Among the D-clearance requests our staff will prioritize students by major and time-to-graduation.

Obtaining D-clearance does not guarantee a seat in any section, it only gives students the ability to add if a seat becomes available.

Academic departments may only waive prerequisites for their own courses.  And mechanically, the waiver is granted from the course the student wishes to enroll in, not from the prerequisite course.  For example, the Math department can waive any prerequisites for any MATH course, but if a PHYS course has a Math prerequisite, only the Physics department can waive that prerequisite.

The USC Math Placement Exam is administered by Dornsife’s Division of Foreign Languages and students can register here.  For all questions about the placement exam, email placement@usc.edu.

The exam only covers Precalculus topics.  Exam results automatically update students’ permissions in OASIS to allow them to register for the appropriate math course, though this process can take up to 10 business days during orientation.

Transfer Credit Services awards 4 units of USC elective credit for scores of 4 or 5 on AP exams (details), but they do not update prerequisites automatically in OASIS.

Instead, email mathinfo@usc.edu with subject line “Standardized Test Scores”, and Cc your academic advisor.  Include the following in the body of your email:

1. Your Student ID number,
2. The section number of the MATH course you’d like to add,
3. The section number of one of the two discussions listed directly after that lecture,
4. Proof of your test score.

There are two IB courses available at two levels each*:

• Mathematics: applications and interpretation SL/HL

• Mathematics: analysis and approaches SL/HL

USC does not consider SL courses for credit or placement purposes.  See Transfer Credit Services information on credit for IB HL coursework here.  See Viterbi’s placement information for IB HL exams here.  Semi-standard IB textbooks can be found here.

For MATH placement, email mathinfo@usc.edu with subject line “Standardized Test Scores”, and Cc your academic advisor.  Include the following in the body of your email:

1. Your Student ID number,
2. The section number of the MATH course you’d like to add,
3. The section number of one of the two discussions listed directly after that lecture,
4. Proof of your test score.

*since Aug 2019, with first assessments in May 2021.

See Transfer Credit Services information on credit for A-level exams here.  See Viterbi’s placement information for A-level exams here.

For MATH placement, email mathinfo@usc.edu with subject line “Standardized Test Scores”, and Cc your academic advisor.  Include the following in the body of your email:

1. Your Student ID number,
2. The section number of the MATH course you’d like to add,
3. The section number of one of the two discussions listed directly after that lecture,
4. Proof of your test score*.

*A-level provisional scores are typically reported in August, after which there is a regrade-request period before finalized scores are reported in October.  For placement purposes only, Math will accept provisional scores for freshmen entering their first Fall semester.

Transfer Credit Services creates a Transfer Credit Report (TCR) for all incoming students, which students can access in OASIS. TCS is in close communication with the Math department and uses the same standards in determining course equivalence.  They keep an extensive database of past articulation decisions, and another specifically for local community colleges.

TCS is the only office that awards USC units for past coursework.  They will only assess lower-division courses that appear on an official college/university transcript.  USC has strict guidelines about awarding units for college courses taken while students were still in high school. For details, see the USC Catalogue’s entry on Transfer Credit Reports and scroll up to section titled “College Courses Taken During High School Enrollment”.

For an undergraduate students to take graduate courses as undergraduate electives, their major department must send written approval to the Office of the Registrar.

The Math department will only approve 500-level electives for MATH/AMCM juniors or seniors, and only for courses that do not have an undergraduate equivalent.  In particular we will reserve seats in Math 505a, 510a, 525a, 540, and 555a for registered graduate students.

If you are interested in taking a graduate course, first contact your academic advisor.  You will also need written approval from the graduate course instructor to verify your readiness for the course.