How long is your drop/add "week"?

[Thursday's_Child]

We've been steadily extending the add period - it's now a week - with all of the predictable results that others have described here.

I don't care how 'student-centered' the admin-idiots claim to be - the fact remains that those students who can't get their act together and enroll in a timely fashion are virtually guaranteed to continue failing to get their act sufficiently together to pass the class.

[Parasaurolophus]

Add/drop here is from Sept. 4-17. So: two weeks. Then the withdrawal period is almost a month long.

[the_geneticist]

We have two full weeks for add-drop.  It's far too long, and students who add after the second class day in one of my courses are definitely going to need to play catch up. 

One thing that doesn't occur to people is the effect on labs. If a lab is early in the week, and a student adds at the end of the 2nd week, then that means that 2 labs have been missed. That's a lot, and will leave anyone other than a really strong student at a serious disadvantage. (And, most people who add late are NOT really strong students.)

FWIW, trying to accommodate these students in the lab by letting the do the experiments they've missed, after the equipment is no longer set up, is extremely inconvenient. (Staff need to be be there to supervise, and the lab needs to be prepared in between the current week's labs, etc.)

I have that issue as well.  Not as much for the majors, but it's a HUGE issue for the non-majors course.  My strategy is to call the registration specialist and kindly ask them to block out registration during week 2 at the end of each lab so I don't have students trying to register on the Friday of week 2 after missing 2 weeks of labs.  It's one thing if they have been attending, but unable to officially register and quite another if they think they can miss 2 weeks and not be behind.  And we're on quarters.

[Aster]

At Big Urban College, our add/drop runs precisely for one full work week. So, Monday to Friday.

But when I worked at elite private SLAC, add/drop lasted for three weeks. I don't know if this was an "elite" thing or not.

[prof_beardo]

Two weeks (well, a week and a half). That being said, I got a new student in a class TODAY (well into week 4) who told me I'd be hearing from admin about why.

Reader, it's after business hours and I have not heard from admin about why.