With course requests for 2026-27 now closed, Registrar Henri “Atticus” de Marcellus and department chairs will begin building next year’s schedule.

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For students, the process is a balancing act between personal interest, building college-readiness, and the limited seats in any given class.

De Marcellus, who oversees the scheduling process each spring, said he encourages students to lead with what interests them.

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“It’s a lot easier to do a hard course if you’re into it,” de Marcellus said.

The process started months earlier. In January, department chairs met to decide next year’s course offerings and update the curriculum guide. De Marcellus then entered the updated options into Blackbaud, opening a three-week window for student requests.

With requests now in, de Marcellus will pull the totals and share them with department chairs. Placement assessments for incoming students factor in as well.

For many students, picking classes means weighing what excites them against what looks best on college applications. Most say genuine interest usually wins.

“For my English classes, I just based it on what I was most interested in taking,” Nate Anderson ’27 said. “But for electives like the math class I took, that was more based on what I thought would appeal to colleges than what I’d necessarily be most interested in.”

Still, Anderson said interest mostly won out.

“At the end of the day, almost all the classes I picked were because I’d actually be interested in them, and not because I thought it would look good to a college,” Anderson said.

Ulysses Morison ’27 described a similar approach.

“I chose my English and history classes based on what seemed most interesting to me personally,” Morison said. “When it came to science, I chose Advanced Physics since I want to major in physics.”

Not every request can be honored, however. Classrooms can only comfortably fit about 18 students on average, capping section sizes.

The fate of an individual course also depends on its enrollment. Electives can be cut if too few students sign up.

“We’ve seen that happen in particular with some of the computer classes that have been offered,” de Marcellus said.

Languages and arts often run regardless of size. De Marcellus said he once taught a Latin class with only two students.

Arts placements also come with another layer.

“I get rosters from dance instructors saying which students are going where based on their auditions,” de Marcellus said. “So, auditions factor into it as well.”

The structure of the schedule itself adds its own constraints. Singletons, which are courses offered for only one period, are scheduled first to minimize conflicts, but conflicts still occur.

“Sometimes there’s a conflict, and someone can’t do A because they’re doing B,” de Marcellus said. “And then at that point they have to make a choice.”

Students said the hardest part of course selection is picking alternates.

“Your first two or three classes you’re pretty excited about,” Anderson said. “But when you get to four or five, you want to make sure you’re in a class that’s good, and you’d be interested in, but also isn’t something super weird.”

Morison faces a different problem at the top of the math curriculum.

“There might not be an available math course for students who are past linear algebra and multivariable calculus in the fall,” Morison said.

Both Anderson and Morison said they’d like more visibility into the process.

“I would make the course ranking system more clear and allow students to access which teachers will be teaching courses, even if there might be multiple for a given course,” Morison said.

De Marcellus said he tries to help students who end up with unbalanced schedules, like having all their hardest classes stacked on the same days, when they reach out about it.

“It’s hard when there’s limited choice,” de Marcellus said. “People sometimes have to take their second preference.”

His broader advice often comes back to a story about his own son, who was signed up for eight courses at Branson, including linear algebra. De Marcellus told him to drop one and take acting instead.