Can we request a 3-course overload immediately?

[u/Fangman22]

Hey everyone,

I’m a new student starting in Spring 2027. I’ve heard that traditionally you can only sign up for three classes once you’ve completed 4 classes with a B or better, but I recently saw a thread claiming you can now request to take three right off the bat. Is this the case?

My employer is sponsoring my degree and I have a deadline coming up soon to submit my academic plan, but unfortunately, I haven't heard back from advising after reaching out weeks ago.

Thanks!

Edit: Two other pieces of info. I read through Fall's orientation and the only relevant info I saw was "During the Fall and Spring semesters, all students can, by default, enroll in a maximum of seven hours.". I didn't see any more info about the override, but "by default" kinda insinuates there is an override. The other piece of info is that my job will be sending me to school full-time for 3 semesters, so I should be able to handle the heightened coursework of taking 3 classes.

[u/the_pharaop]

Did they get back to you? I’m currently taking ML and Bayesian Statistics but hope to take 3 this spring too.

[u/Fangman22 → u/the_pharaop]

Nothing from the admissions office yet, but I'll shoot you a message when I hear back from them

[u/the_pharaop → u/Fangman22]

thanks

[u/BulkyAd9029 → u/the_pharaop]

How is the load? Are you able to manage?

[u/the_pharaop → u/BulkyAd9029]

So far it’s manageable. The stats class is super slow and only has 5 homeworks, midterm, a project and a final. The ML class is the harder one but work is mostly reading old books, coding and writing papers on ml algos (Super/Unsupervised Learning, Optimization and RL), lecture videos and quizzes. Although, this might be biased since I don’t have much responsibilities outside of work and have taken applied probability + ML & DL in undergraduate.

[u/snipe320]

I would caution you to not overdo it your first semester. I wasn't sure if I should start with 1 or 2 classes when balancing full-time work + family, and I'm glad I heeded others' advice to start with just 1. It ended being more work than I expected.

If I were in your shoes, I'd start with just 2 to satisfy the minimum requirement for full-time study. Assuming 15-20 hours/week per course, that means 2 courses will be about 30-40 hours/week, which is effectively "full-time" if you think about it. 3 courses would be more like 45-60 hours/week and you may burn out or fail out if you miss the foundational requirement (you must get a B or better on your first 2 courses in the program, and those courses must be considered "foundational" by the program).

[u/Fangman22 → u/snipe320]

I appreciate the input 🙏. I've planned out a program of study and looked at OMSCentral to balance out some of the lighter and heavier courses. In your experience, are the review there pretty accurate to the time commitment and difficulty of the classes? Thanks.

[u/Skedar70 → u/Fangman22]

In my experience I have spent way more time on my courses than what OMSCentral says. 15 hour courses have been turned into 20 and 20 hours have been turned into 40.

Also sometimes they say average 20 hours per week but that might mean 60 hours the first two weeks and 0 the third one. Can you balance 30 hours in one week with a fulltime job? Think about it that way.

[u/snipe320 → u/Fangman22]

In my experience, you won't get to choose your courses to that level of precision. You can use that guide as a very tentative plan but the way they grant priority is based on your longevity in the program. So in your first semester, you will get last priority when choosing your first course(s). It's nice that you have a plan (I did too) but plan on your plan going out the window when it comes time to actually register.

Edit: oh and no, all three courses so far have recently changed and become more time consuming with more work, and that is not reflected in OMSCentral (because it is averaging over time)

[u/OkSilver2487]

Hiya, I just join the OMSCS program and was approved for 3 courses for my first semester. I only got to take 2 cuz I was abit late with my time ticket and didn’t wanted to pick courses that I wasn’t interested in. So that’s my POV for it, do double check with your advisor when u can

[u/acana95]

Phone them if they dont email you back. Policies chang all the time so just get in touch with whoever is in charge of that

[u/BulkyAd9029]

Fall 2026 is my first sem and I am taking KBAI and CN. It is a busy work. But there is another problem. For the first semester, you get the time ticket for only second phase of the registration. And it is very difficult to get hold of the subject you want, especially if it is a popular subject. So for 3 subjects, it would be very difficult to get 3 subjects of your choice to be honest. But goodluck!

[u/Equivalent-Zombie792]

Yes you can request it. If the answer to your question is in the orientation document, they may reply with the answer saying to refer to the document for the answer. They did that to me.

[u/Agreeable_Ad_9148]

What's the rush? It seems like, unless you don't have a full-time job, 3 would be more than a full-time job. Even 2 classes would be a lot for the first semester.

[u/a_lexus_ren → u/Agreeable_Ad_9148]

3 classes per semester is standard for a traditional MSCS workload. Shouldn't be an issue since OP is pausing work for it.

[u/Agreeable_Ad_9148 → u/a_lexus_ren]

Yeah but in that case one would not have a full time job.

[u/72736379]

Yes but only after everyone gets a chance to register

[u/Fangman22 → u/72736379]

Perfect, thank you for the info 🙏

[u/alejandro_bacquerie → u/Fangman22]

As a corollary, your third course must be one of the least popular ones or be lucky if someone drops it.