For students tired of settling for the last spot with the worst professor in an 8 a.m. class, RegAssist.com is a long-awaited and welcome remedy.
The two-year old, student-designed program is intended to help Boston University students realize the once impossible dream of actually registering for their ideal schedule.
"It's set up to constantly monitor the BU course schedule," co-owner Nichola Eliovits said. "Our server recognizes when a seat immediately opens, and once it opens, we send an email and a text message."
The $4.99 fee is reduced for each additional class, and is also fully refunded if the student does not register for that class, whatever the reason may be, said Eliovits, a School of Management sophomore.
"The more courses you need registration for, the cheaper it gets," he said. "You have nothing to lose."
The program is currently monitoring between 90 and 100 courses. While 100 percent of students who signed up were notified if a spot opened in their class, 82 percent of those students successfully registered for it, Eliovits said.
He attributed this to students not registering in time.
Ariel Levin and Asaf Manela, who were both SMG seniors at the time, founded RegAssist.com in March of 2003. Eliovits said he was unaware of the program when he thought he solved the frustrations that registration brought.
"I thought of the idea, then looked around and figured out someone else had already done it," Eliovits said.
When Eliovits realized the founders would be graduating, he pitched the idea of buying the program to his friend, Yamen Al-Hajjar.
"He approached me with the idea," said Al-Hajjar, an SMG sophomore. "We started discussing it, and I realized it was worth getting into."
Levin and Manela agreed to sell Eliovits and Al-Hajjar the program in April of 2004.
The two sophomores currently work six hours a week on the website and have already begun modifying the program for expansion.
"We made improvements, like fixing the codes, so there are less bugs," Eliovits said.
By hiring an engineer to write the program for other universities, Eliovits and Al-Hajjar plan to expand the program to 50 universities in the next six months - concentrating on schools with more than 15,000 students, Eliovits said.
Still in the early stages of expansion, those improvements are costing the program its revenue.
"We're putting more in than we're getting out right now," Eliovits said.
But with plans to emphasize advertising in the future, Eliovits and Al-Hajjar said they are optimistic about the program's future.
Officials from the Office of the Registrar said they were unaware of the program, but they support the idea.
"It sounds like a good resource for students to have," said Elizabeth Curran, a registration advisor. "There's no conflict with us because students would still have to go through the same steps to get into the class."
Officials from the College of Arts and Sciences Academic Advising Office, also unaware of the program, had no comment.
CAS sophomore Caroline Dyer said she has never heard of the program, but would use it in the future.
"I think it's a smart idea because usually when you register for classes and it's full, you only check once a day," Dyer said. "The fact that they give you a refund makes it a win-win situation."
University of Massachusetts at Boston sophomore Irene Tu said she wished the program was available at her school.
"I would definitely use that program," she said. "I think $5 is a really fair price."
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