Dman wrote:I actually did ask the question last year to staff (I forget who, not sure if it was with the Dean or not). The answer was that there is some randomized method that evenly distributed students. I did not press it farther or ask for evidence SBL style
Section stacking, myth or fact, is really just impossible to prove unless everyone is willing to talk about their numbers and their scholarships. At my school, a friend of mine who is just generally paranoid swore up and down that his section was stacked. When I pointed out to him that my section had just as many large scholarship recipients as him, he still wasn't convinced. Fact was though, my experience made me fairly certain that the "we randomly place students" thing was true.
I didn't enroll in school until the day before classes were to begin. I begged to not be placed in the legal writing section that met at 8 am, but was told there was nothing they could do, the computer worked up a matrix and randomly placed students based on their incoming numbers and scholarships. I remember sitting in the dean of academic affairs' office and watching the computer randomize my section placement. I got the damn 8am section
Anyway, no school is ever going to provide any sort of "evidence" that shows they don't section stack. They'll all stick to the story that section placement is random. In some cases, that is true. In others, perhaps it's not.