Frequently Asked Questions

Semesterly is optimized for Firefox 3.0 and above, Safari 3 and above, and Internet Explorer 7 and above. Internet Explorer 6 users will find that not all Semesterly functionality is supported by their browser, and encouraged to download a more recent version.

The Semesterly team knows that selecting courses is among the most important academic activities you undertake. That's why we developed the site in the first place. In order to ensure that your decisions are based on the most accurate data, we pull course information directly from your institution's course database. We've custom built our data acquisition methods to ensure we're getting every class, every section, and every book – no matter how unique.
What's more, we update the information with great frequency, including every other hour during peak registration times. This way you'll know when classes are filling up, or when that closed course makes a few more seats available.
If we don't have books listed for a course, it's because the instructor or institution hasn't made the information public yet. We'll catch it when it becomes available. In the meantime, let your teachers know that it's important to give you a heads up about course materials. They can use our sister site www.booklinkpro.com to compile their reading lists and offer students a custom price comparison engine.

This happens, albeit rarely. Let us explain:

We populate the price comparison list of books when you select the book for the course. If you add a book to your Semesterly cart, but before you proceed to the retailer page the book is sold, then the book won't be in your retailer cart when you go to Amazon,Half, and Abebooks. Unfortunately, until the retailers come up with a fix, we can't solve this problem.

Always check your cart at the retailer to make sure all the books you've added are present. We make it easy with the checkout window on the Books page of Semesterly - use it!

Saved courses are listed on your saved courses list, so you can navigate to them again really easily. Think of it like BookMarking a course.

Scheduled courses are course meeting times that you've added to your schedule - by selecting a course time from the course information box, by choosing a time for a saved course from the mini-calendar in the slider window on the catalog page, or by using the schedule optimizer to generate an ideal course schedule for you.

When a course is on your schedule, your facebook friends will see you listed as taking the course. If the course is just on your saved courses list, they'll have to look at your semesterly class list specifically to see that you're interested in that course.

No, you don't! But, you'll miss out on all the social elements of the site - recommending courses to friends, adding their courses to your saved courses list, and seeing how your schedules compare.

If you do use Facebook Connect, your course information will only be available to your Facebook friends so you don't have to worry about strangers seeing your class schedule.