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Department of Statistics

Information for New Statistics Freshmen

Welcome to Statistics at NC State University!
Congratulations on deciding to become a Statistics Major at NC State! We are excited to begin the process of working with you to reach your educational goals. New Statistics majors will participate in the Self-Registration Program, which allows you to register for your classes online before New Student Orientation. Each of you has randomly been assigned an enrollment date between June 4 and June 7 to register for Fall classes. It is important that you enroll ON YOUR ASSIGNED DAY between the hours of 8am and midnight, since after that day passes you will be blocked from registering until general registration re-opens on June 10. Having an early date gives you no advantage over those with a date later in the week, since 25% of seats have been reserved for registration on each day. The Self-Registration website linked above provides a variety of resources to help you through the process of course enrollment, including tutorials that describe the use of our online registration system and answers to many questions about AP and IB credits. You should already have received from the University three of the four things you need to register for classes: your Unity ID, password, and PIN. Use those to login to your MyPack Portal, and review the tutorials to familiarize yourself with the system. You will use it regularly for many tasks during your time at NC State.

The Enrollment Wizard Tutorial will be especially helpful to you for registration purposes. The Enrollment Wizard is a very powerful tool, but it can also be very frustrating at first because there are so many search options you can select. If you are searching for a course that you are confident should be present, you probably have a search option box or menu item incorrectly checked.

While it won’t let you enroll directly, the Class Search Tool is a simple way to browse classes for both current and past semesters. Looking at past semester course offerings is very useful to give you an idea as to what courses will be offered in future semesters (for example, even though the schedule for Spring 2025 is not yet determined, looking at Spring 2024 will show you what is likely to be offered).

The fourth and final thing you need is some guidance in finding the courses you need. First off, please ignore the courses that the registration system has automatically loaded into your course planners. That system clearly has some problems, and the classes it loaded for Statistics majors make no sense at all. I encourage you to simply delete all of those.

Before you register in June, you can go ahead and load courses into your Shopping Cart (which is different than your Planner, although you can shift course from your planner into your cart) using the Enrollment Wizard in your MyPack Portal (see tutorials linked above). Most of you will take the following four courses at a minimum: COS 100, ST 114, ST 311, and a calculus course (either MA 141, 241, or 242). Details about each of those follows.

All of you should register for the following two courses:

  • COS 100: 2 credit hours. Perspectives on Learning. All Statistics majors MUST take this class in the Fall semester.
  • ST 114: 3 credit hours. Statistical Programming. You should first select ST 114 section 001, which is the lecture portion of the course. You will next select one of the two lab sections, either section 401 or 402, depending on your time preference. Once these are full, they are full, so register early to get the best chance of having the time slot you want!

Most of you should also add ST 311 and a math course:

  • ST 311: 3 credit hours. Introduction to Statistics. Many of you have AP credit for this class. If so you do not need to take it. However, some of our students decide to take ST 311 even if they do have AP credit for it, especially if it has been a couple of years since you took AP Statistics. When selecting a section of ST 311 you will notice that each of them includes a Thursday (H) 6:00-7:50PM “meeting time.” All sections of ST 311 take the same exams, and they will be given on Thursdays in that time slot. The class will not meet every Thursday 6:00-7:50.
  • Math: 4 credit hours. Most likely a calculus course based on the results of your placement exam or AP scores. Most of you will begin with MA 141. Start by taking the Math Placement Exam to see if you are prepared for MA 141.
  • AP Credit for Calculus. If you have a 3 or higher on the AP Calculus AB exam, you may choose to enroll in MA 241 (but you are welcome to begin with MA 141 if you feel more comfortable- use the results of the placement exam to help guide your decision). If you have a 3 or higher on the AP Calculus BC exam you may enroll in MA 242 (but again, you might choose to begin with MA 241 or even MA 141 if you are more comfortable doing that). If you have not yet received your AP scores you should register according to the math placement exam score. Once you have your scores you can update your enrollment using your Enrollment Wizard. If you have your AP score but your credit is not appearing, please begin by contacting your advisor.
  • Transfer Credit for Calculus. On your Undergraduate Degree Audit (video) you will see any transfer credits earned at other universities, community colleges, Early College, etc. You MUST have credit showing there for MA 141 in order to enroll in MA 241. Similarly, you must have credit for MA 241 in order to enroll in MA 242. You can use the Transfer Database to verify what credit you should get for the courses you took (not all course from all schools will be present). If you are expecting credit, please make sure you have had your official transcript from the previous college sent to the NCSU Admissions office. If you are certain you should have transfer credit that is not appearing in your degree audit, please begin by contacting your advisor for guidance.

After enrolling for COS 100, ST 114, ST 311, and a Math class you will have 12 credits. The minimum full-time schedule is 12 credits, and a good load for your first semester is 12-16 credits. You may think this does not sound like many classes. After all, you probably took 6 or 7 classes every semester in high school! At NC State 1 credit hour corresponds to about 1 hour of in-class instruction. For every hour of in-class time you should expect to spend 2-3 hours of time outside of class. Thus, if you take 15 credits you should expect to spend a total of 45-60 hours per week on your classes.

At this university site you will always be able to find a model plan for making timely progress towards your degree. We call this the “Semester Sequence” or “8-semester display.” Please look at it carefully, and make a special point to read through the footnotes- there is important information there. You probably want to bookmark this page so you can get back to it.

If you do not have AP Statistics credit, you should begin with the 12 credits above (COS 100, ST 114, ST 311, Math). You might be comfortable with that as your complete Fall schedule, perhaps adding a 1-credit Health and Fitness (HESS or HESF) class. If you feel more confident with your time management skills, or if you have AP Stat credit for ST 311, then you can select one or two additional classes. Looking ahead to the second and third semesters of the 8-semester display, you see that choosing a Communications class (like COM 110) or a course satisfying your General Education Program (GEP) requirements would make sense. One thing we do NOT recommend is taking ST 312 in your first semester if you have AP Stat credit. In the Spring we will have a smaller section of 312 with most seats reserved for ST majors, and we strongly recommend that you hold off and take 312 then. Most Statistics majors wait until their second semester to take their required English class ENG 101, but you are welcome to do so if you like (especially if you won’t be taking ST 311)- Guidance on English Placement. Please note that credit for ENG 100 does NOT satisfy your English requirement; ENG 100 will appear as Free Elective credit.

The other sources of help are the academic advisors and undergraduate staff in the Statistics Department. Your academic advisor has been assigned and you can find their name in your MyPack Portal. You can contact them by e-mail when you need some help or advice. Ms. Angie Lueneburg is the administrative contact for the undergraduate program and can provide answers to many of your questions. Finally, Dr. Spencer Muse is the Undergraduate Program Director and is glad to talk to you about any problems or concerns you may have. We also have a Statistics web page for General Registration and Advising Questions that you may find helpful

NC State has a useful page loaded with lots of information for incoming Freshmen.