Before this school year, the schedule-change norm was waking up at the crack of dawn to be the first one at school to ask for changes from the Upper School office. But now there’s a new model–starting this spring, the Upper School will distribute student schedules in mid-May.

Up until the announcement during the Upper School Curriculum Morning Ex in February, students expected to get a first glance at their highly anticipated schedules just weeks before the commencement of the new school year in August.

The main orchestrator of the idea was the school’s registrar, Matt McCaw, in conjunction with Head of the Upper School Peter Neissa.

Day to day, McCaw can be found in his office formulating and navigating the schedules of students.  His busiest time of the year, he said, “is the time when students have to hand in their course registration sheets.”

The process of constructing students’ schedules is fairly straightforward. “All of the student input is factored into a computer model that is created by a scheduling engine,” McCaw said. “The bulk of the work is done by the computer.”

After taking what the computer has manufactured, McCaw goes through the “process of finding things that are missing, little inconsistencies that have to be fixed.” This entails going through every student’s schedule and making sure they have all of the correct classes in their schedule in order for them to graduate.   

McCaw began to think about making a change earlier in this school year and decided to meet with Neissa to discuss it.  

McCaw collected student registration forms in early March.  Then, through entering their requests and speaking to department heads, McCaw set about finalizing the schedules.

The early release of the schedule would essentially “relieve some of the pressure,” McCaw said.  “It would make scheduling easier because we would have a whole summer to add or drop their classes in addition to the time given to them during the school year.”

To McCaw, there is no downside. “I can’t think of any drawbacks,” McCaw said. “Students definitely feel better knowing what they are going to take the following year.”

The early release helps the students  not only with their needs, but also with McCaw’s job of making and tweaking the schedule once it’s set. “While I’m making schedules, I have everybody around during the spring,” McCaw said. “In the summertime you can’t reach out to people as easily, you can’t talk to instructors, so it certainly helps out to have everybody within walking range.”

As in with years past, elective-scheduling priority will go to upperclassmen.

Sophomore Jett Bronstein, for one, is pleased.  “It’s great,” Bronstein said.  “It allows the students more time to evaluate their schedule and then, if need be, make changes with a much bigger time-frame than what we had last year or in the years past.”  

Senior Eli Malkin agreed.  “I wish this was in place earlier because I know everyone will benefit from it,” Malkin said. “I can remember during Junior year when I had to wake up at 3am the day we could change our schedules because everyone wanted to be the first ones to change their schedules.  It was crazy.”

“This model will certainly aid in every part of the scheduling process,” McCaw said, “and I can’t wait to see how it benefits the students.”