Main list and waiting list

How ABS Elevate decides who gets a place on a course — the credit-budgeted walk down your own ranking, what capacity does, where the program office intervenes, and what to do if you missed out.

This is the page for the learner who asked for four courses, got two, and wants to know why those two.

The short answer is that ABS Elevate walks down your shortlist, in the order you ranked it, spending the credits you allocated to that window, and gives you every course it can still afford when it reaches it. Everything else on this page is detail on top of that sentence.

It is not first come, first served

Shortlisting a course early does not improve your chances. There is no queue and no reward for being quick.

What runs out is credits, not attempts. The walk does not stop at the first course it cannot give you — it carries on to the bottom of your list, so a cheap course near the end can still be granted after an expensive one above it was not.

Arrival time is used once, and only once: to separate people who are otherwise tied for the last places on an over-subscribed course. It is a tie-break, not the rule.

The two lists

Every course in a registration window keeps two lists, and for each course you shortlisted you are on one of them.

The main list is the people who have a place.
The waiting list is the people who asked and did not get one, kept in order. That order is not a queue that advances on its own: while the course is still being worked out it is recomputed as people change their shortlists, and once the course is confirmed, a place changing hands is a program officer's decision.

These lists are not written once at the deadline and then left alone. They are worked out from everybody's current shortlists whenever anyone looks, which is why ABS Elevate can already tell you a course is full while the window is still open. Until the program office confirms a course, the answer can change from one day to the next as other learners edit their own lists.

How your place is worked out

Your own list is walked, top to bottom

You start the walk with the credits you allocated to that window. ABS Elevate takes your first choice: if its cost is within what you have left, you go on that course's main list and its cost comes off your balance. If it is not, you go on that course's waiting list and your balance is untouched.

Either way the walk moves on to your next choice, and keeps going to the end of your list.

This is the step that decides most outcomes, and it uses nothing but your own three inputs: your order, your credits, the costs.

Over-subscribed courses give places back

The first pass ignores how many places a course actually has, so some courses come out of it with more people on the main list than they can take. Each of those is then brought back down to its limit.

The people on a course's main list are held in the order in which they added that choice, and the most recent addition is the one moved to the waiting list. That is the only place where the timing of your click matters, and it only matters between people who are otherwise tied for the last seat.

Anyone moved out is reconsidered

Losing a place gives you those credits back, and the walk immediately looks again at the courses still on your waiting list, in your order. Any of them you can now afford, and that still has room, becomes a main-list place.

So being turned away from a full course is not simply a loss. It often converts into a place on something else you had asked for further down.

The program office reviews the result and confirms

What the first three steps produce is a proposal, not a verdict. Program officers see, course by course, the cost, the minimum and maximum capacity, the size of each list and who is on it. They can adjust it by hand, and they do — for balance, for capacity, for individual circumstances that no calculation knows about.

When a course is confirmed, its main list is fixed as it stands at that moment and stops moving. Until then, everything above is provisional.

Maximum capacity: what a full course means

A course can have a maximum number of places. Once the working main list fills them, the course is full.

You are told about this at the moment you try to shortlist it, in a dialog headed Course is at its max capacity:

This course is already at its max capacity, you can still shortlist it. Though you'll be added to the wait list in a case a place from the main list is freed.

Choosing I want to join the waitlist puts the course on your shortlist anyway.

Whether that is a good idea depends on where you put it. A full course that stays full will not spend any of your credits, so it costs you nothing to keep on the list — but it also costs you nothing to move it down, and the courses below it are the ones you can actually still get. Ranking a full course at the top is a way of hoping rather than choosing.

Note that full is a statement about right now. Other learners are still editing their lists, and a course full on Tuesday can have room on Thursday.

Minimum capacity: a course that may not run

A course can also have a minimum number of people. A course that does not reach it may simply not be run: there is a point below which the school will not schedule a room, an instructor and a week of somebody's time.

That decision is made by the program office, not by the platform, and it is made after the window closes. A course that is cancelled is marked as such, and being on its main list gives you nothing — which is another reason to keep your shortlist long. If the only thing you asked for after your top choice was one thinly-subscribed elective, a cancellation leaves you with nothing to fall back on.

Where the program office intervenes

Each course in a registration window is in one of three states, and the program office moves it between them. The screen where it does that is not translated, so the three words are in English there whichever language is in use.

Pending — still being worked out. Both lists are provisional and move as people edit their shortlists.
Planned — confirmed. The main list is fixed at the moment of confirmation, and the program officer is asked to review it name by name before committing, with the option to add and remove people. Once a course is planned, its cost is taken out of your allocated credits, and any remaining choice of yours that this leaves you unable to afford stops being considered.
Canceled — the course is not going ahead. Nobody has a place on it.

A program officer can also remove an individual learner from a course's lists — for a prerequisite you do not hold, a clash they can see and the platform cannot, or a conversation you had with them. If that happens you are simply not considered for that course.

How you find out

Here is a thing worth knowing before you go looking for it: ABS Elevate does not show you your own place on your own screens. There is no page where you can read "In Main List" beside your own name. After the deadline the shortlist page shows you what you asked for, in the order you asked for it, and nothing about what you got.

You find out in two ways instead.

A confirmation message. When the program office confirms the courses of a registration window, ABS Elevate can send each learner a message that splits their shortlist in two: the courses that came through, and the courses that did not.
Your courses. A confirmed course you have a place on becomes a class, and appears among your own courses with its sessions and dates.

If you need to know before either of those arrives, ask the program office. They can see it; you cannot.

The four words your program office sees

When a program officer opens a course and looks at everyone who asked for it, each name carries one of four labels. You do not see these on your own screens, but they are the vocabulary the program office will use if you ask what happened, so they are worth knowing:

In Main List — the course is still being worked out, and as things stand you have a place.
In Waiting List — the course is still being worked out, and as things stand you do not.
Registered — the course has been confirmed and you are on the final list. This is the one that means it is settled.
Removed — a program officer has taken you off this course's lists by hand.

A name with no label at all, on a confirmed course, means the course went ahead without you.

What follows for you

Everything above reduces to one instruction.

Put what matters most at the top, because the walk spends your credits in your order. A course ranked below more courses than your allocated credits can cover is never reached with anything left to spend, however early you added it and however much you want it.

Three corollaries, in order of how often they are got wrong:

Do not rank tactically. Your list is walked on its own, against your own credits. Burying a course you want under one you do not gains you nothing and can cost you the course.
Allocate enough credits. The walk cannot spend what you did not allocate to that window. This is the most common cause of a short main list and a long waiting list on one learner's shortlist.
Make the list longer than you think you need. Courses fill, courses get cancelled, and both of those hand your credits back to be spent further down — but only if there is a further down.

If you are on a waiting list

Being on a waiting list is not a rejection and not a dead end. While the course is still being worked out, the list moves whenever somebody above you removes the course, reorders their own shortlist, or is moved off it by the program office.

Three things are worth doing, in this order:

Check whether the window is still open. If it is, you can still act — raise your allocated credits, reorder your shortlist, or swap the course for one you can actually get. This is far and away the most effective thing you can do, and it stops being possible the moment the deadline passes.
Ask the program office. They can see both lists, the capacities and the reason a course was confirmed the way it was. They are also the only people who can change it.
Wait for the next window. A cohort usually has more than one, your budget follows you across all of them, and a course you missed this time is often offered again.