Welcome to Statistics at NC State University!

Please note: as mentioned in the email from Dr. Muse on May 17, this page will be updated to reflect changes to your degree audit in your MyPack Portal. I will indicate those changes here as they happen.

May 22 Update: On Wednesday May 27 at 7:30 pm eastern time I will hold a review session covering new student information, but focusing on Fall registration and advising. This will be a good time to ask questions not only about Fall classes, but about the major and university as well. I’ll post a link to the recording after the meeting. Here’s the Zoom link: https://ncsu.zoom.us/j/6631108593.

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. First off, NC State has a useful page loaded with lots of information for incoming Freshmen. We also have a Statistics web page for General Registration and Advising Questions that you may find helpful, and the University has an outstanding page with lots of useful Registration Information. In particular, on that page you will find a link to Enrollment Exception Contacts; use this list when you are unable to enroll yourself in a course but feel that you have met the requirements to be in the class.

I will be scheduling a Zoom class registration information session sometime during the week of May 25- I’ll send you an email once the date and time are finalized, and I’ll add the link here. This session is almost certainly going to be May 27 at 7:30pm. I’ll also post a recording for those of you who can’t attend.

The Zoom session will be May 27 at 7:30pm Eastern time. I’ll post a link to the recording after the meeting. Here’s the Zoom link: https://ncsu.zoom.us/j/6631108593.

New Statistics majors will participate in the Self-Registration Program, which allows you to register for your classes online before New Student Orientation. If you see an Advising Hold in your MyPack Portal, don’t worry– it will be removed automatically. Each of you will soon be randomly assigned a 1-day enrollment window of either June 1, June 3, or June 5 to register for Fall classes. You will find this date in your MyPack Portal. It is important that you enroll ON YOUR ASSIGNED DAY between the hours of 8am and midnight. After that day passes you will be blocked from registering until general registration re-opens on June 8. Having an early date gives you no advantage over those with a date later in the week, since 33% of seats have been reserved for registration on each day. If you were unable to get the class, section, or time that you wanted, definitely check back in on June 8 to see what has opened up. One of the big changes from high school that you will face is that you will often not be able to get the exact schedule you want, and you will sometimes even need to postpone courses until later semesters.

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. If you have not already, you will soon receive 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 2027 is not yet determined, looking at Spring 2026 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. Before you register in June, you can go ahead and load courses into your Shopping Cart (which is not the same thing as your Planner, although you can shift courses 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 115, ST 120, and a math 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 115: 3 credit hours. Introduction to a Data Science Toolkit with R and Github. This will be a introduction to programming using the R language, and it will also teach you how to use a variety of powerful development, documentation, and sharing resources. You should first select ST 115 section 001, which is the lecture (Lec) portion of the course. You will next select one of the two Problem Sessions (Pro), 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 120 and a math course:

• ST 120: 4 credit hours. Fundamentals of Statistical Inference. There is only one option for this course- select ST 120 section 001. The ST 120 course is new, and it is not yet showing in the schedule of Fall courses. You will see a listing for ST 295, which is a placeholder for ST 120. By the end of the week ST 120 should appear.
  • Many of you have AP credit for ST 311. If you look at the degree requirements closely you will see that it is possible to replace ST 120 with ST 311 plus ST 312. We strongly recommend that you take ST 120 instead of 312. Yes, it is a 4-credit course instead of a 3-credit course so it will take up a little more time. However, the benefits greatly outweigh the cost of that 1 additional credit. First, this class will only have new statistics freshmen in it. It will be a great way to establish a cohort of students who will be taking many of the same classes as you over the next few years. Second, taking ST 120 will guarantee that you see all the material we expect our freshmen to understand. Your AP class may not have covered some ST 311 topics, and it may been a couple of years since you took AP Statistics. Finally, since some of the ST 120 material will be a review of AP Statistics topics, it is likely that you will be able to start out your college career with a high grade that will help your GPA.
• Math: 4 credit hours. This will 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.
  • Enrollment help for Math: Students who are unable to enroll in math courses because of prerequisite issues can request help using the online form at go.ncsu.edu/MathEnrollment. If you are taking a summer course or already know your AP score, please submit your request using go.ncsu.edu/MathEnrollment. If you are waiting on AP scores to be released in July you should not use that form. Instead, take the math placement test, enroll in the class it suggests, then adjust your enrollment after their AP credit has posted. 
  • If classes have reserved or restricted seats, students should first attempt to add themselves to the waitlist, if possible.
• 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). As noted above, 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.
• 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- simply telling us that you took the course previously is not sufficient. 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.
• Credit for MA 131, but not MA 141. You need credit for MA 141 before taking MA 241, and this is strictly enforced by the Math department. If you find yourself in this situation you can look into the possibility of doing a self-study program followed by an on-campus placement exam to see if you are prepared for MA 241. If interested, please email Dr. Molly Fenn (mafenn2@ncsu.edu) about this option.

After enrolling for COS 100, ST 115, ST 120, and a Math class you will have 13 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.

You should begin with the 13 credits above (COS 100, ST 115, ST 120, 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 you can select an additional class. Looking ahead in the 8-semester display, you see that choosing a course satisfying your General Education Program (GEP) or Natural Science requirements would make sense, or maybe even ENG 101. But beware, ENG 101 is a 4-credit course that requires a lot of time. Most Statistics majors wait until their second semester to take it.

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.

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.” (Since that page is currently still showing the “old” statistics degree requirements, please refer to the spreadsheet attached to the email I sent you on May 17.) 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. Entering NCSU Statistics Undergraduate into Google will lead you to the main page for our Statistics major, where you will find this page along with other useful information and resources.

The other primary sources of help for you 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.