As the spring semester approaches, one opportunity on some Wellesley students’ minds is participating in Wellesley’s cross-registration program at MIT, Babson College, Olin College of Engineering and Brandeis University.

After the first semester of their first year, Wellesley students can cross-register for one course per semester at one institution, with exceptions for courses that are part of a two-course half-semester pairing. 

In recent years, the number of Wellesley cross-registered students has grown consistently, following a dip in cross-registration during the COVID years. The number of students cross-registered at MIT has increased steadily since 2022, surpassing the previous highest number of students cross-registered from 2019-2022.

MIT is the most popular institution for cross-registration. According to enrollment statistics from MIT, 389 Wellesley students are cross-registered at the university this semester. The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) at MIT does not count as a cross-registered course.

“We are grateful for our longstanding collaboration with MIT, which has benefitted generations of students, and for our partnerships with these other institutions,” Provost Courtney Coile wrote in an email to the News. 

Although the College’s Office of Institutional Research and Office of the Registrar initially offered to provide specific data about the number of students per year cross-registered at each institution to The Wellesley News, this request was later denied. 

In a statement on Nov. 25, Director of Media Relations Stacey Schmeidel said that “the number of Wellesley students who cross-register at other institutions is fairly consistent across all sophomores, juniors and seniors, although the numbers are lower for first-year students, since they can’t cross-register until their second semester.”

This is consistent with enrollment data from MIT, which shows that 134 sophomores, 117 juniors and 134 seniors from Wellesley cross-registered at MIT from Wellesley, compared to four first-years. 

Wellesley students cross-register in a wide variety of disciplines. Natasha Kamara Martinez ’27, a Wellesley student majoring in computer science, enrolled in a course at MIT’s Sloan School of Management last semester and is taking three courses at MIT this semester as part of an engineering leadership program. She noticed differences in both classroom and campus culture. 

“The first class I took, there were three different lecturers, which I haven’t seen at Wellesley,” she said. “Also, there are crazy conversations, or things I’ve heard at MIT … it’s more diverse [because] we as a campus tend to skew to one side.”

Because of the bigger classes, “you can really fly under the radar at MIT,” Martinez said. “In one class, we had to print name tags for the professor to cold-call students.”

Iris Zhan ’27 said that larger classes also give Wellesley students “the ability to interact with like grad students, which I find really valuable.” 

Nick Cunha ’27, who attends Olin College of Engineering and has cross-registered at Wellesley twice, had an inverse reaction to course sizes, given Olin’s significantly smaller student body of around 400 students.

“All these schools are really small, but Olin is an order of magnitude smaller than Babson and Wellesley,” he said. “It’s nice to get a change of pace. We call it ‘escaping the bubble’ because Olin’s campus is so small, you see the same people all the time.” 

Cunha said that many Olin students cross-register in order to fulfill their humanities requirement, because Olin primarily offers STEM classes. 

“Our humanities requirement is called [the] AHS (arts, humanities and society) concentration. And you take 12 credits of a certain theme of your choosing,” Cunha said. “So I chose Italian Studies, and I thought it would be a perfect way to fill that out with some classes at Wellesley.”

Although MIT is primarily known for its STEM programs, Wellesley students reported cross-registering in humanities courses. Zhan highlighted the music and theater programs and productions at MIT. 

“I really value the music and arts at Wellesley, especially in Jewett [and] I feel like they’re more small group, intimate,” Zhan said. “But if you want something that’s grand and symphonic, but you want that for free, MIT is, like, the place to go.”

Dining is another bonus of cross-registration for Wellesley students, who have access to any dining hall or retail location on the MIT campus.

“My friend told me about the perks of cross-registering and getting on the MIT food plan, and how good the food is there,” Zhan said. “I was like, wait, this food is amazing. Nothing against Wellesley Fresh, but there’s just so many different food options [at MIT].”

Cross-registered students from Babson and Olin can eat unlimited meals at Wellesley, and Wellesley students have access to one meal swipe per day at MIT.

The greatest drawback to cross-registration, according to Zhan and Martinez, is the commute. For students cross-registered at Babson or Olin, a short shuttle ride is the primary form of student transportation. To get to MIT, students take the Local Motion bus (the LoCo), which has faced criticism for unreliability.

Abby Choi ’28, who cross-registered at MIT last semester in a linguistics course, observed that the LoCo didn’t always have enough seats available. For this reason, an unreliable LoCo schedule has contributed to cross-registering challenges.

“If you didn’t get on at the chapel stop, you couldn’t get on,” Choi said. “People had to Uber to class sometimes.” 

 Zhan explained that they are taking a class at MIT this semester from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m., so they have to take the earliest available LoCo ride. However, this meant they could not get breakfast because the dining halls open at 7 a.m., when the first LoCo departed.

After students raised this issue, Director of Transportation Peter Eastment announced that the first Exchange Bus would depart the Chapel at 7:15 a.m. rather than 7 a.m.

“Thank you for your patience as we work to develop a schedule that best meets the needs of commuting and cross-registered students,” Eastment wrote in a campus-wide email. 

Cunha, who drives his own car to Wellesley, said that the BOW shuttle is “pretty consistently reliable.” Martinez praised the BOW shuttle for being “really convenient.”

Students have expressed frustration with the cross-registration process. All the schools have different registration schedules and course start and end dates, circumstances that require more advance planning. 

Martinez called the current process “so silly.” She described having to email the MIT professor of the class she hoped to take, fill out a Google form, have the professor sign it, and then get approval from the Wellesley Registrar.

Zhan expressed similar concerns, and speculated that this issue seems intentional. 

“I mean, this is one of the biggest issues that people have with MIT classes is they don’t fit the best into [their] schedule … That does not feel accidental, honestly,” they said. 

Beyond academic opportunities, Cunha, Martinez and Zhan all noted that cross-registering allows students to diversify their college experience, as all the colleges in the system offer different campus and classroom cultures.

“[You can] talk to people you wouldn’t meet here at Wellesley,” Martinez said. “It’s good to get out and try something new.”

Zhan believes the cross-registration program would benefit from more MIT students taking classes at Wellesley.

“One of the issues with overwhelmingly Wellesley students cross-registering, at MIT and not the other way around, is it kind of makes Wellesley students look like there’s not enough to offer at [our] school,” they said. “There’s so much that Wellesley has that MIT students could benefit from, and I think that that needs to be promoted.”

Contact the editor responsible for this article: Jessica Chen