Course Requisites Overview

In order to successfully register for a course, you may need to meet certain requirements that must be completed prior to enrolling in a course. These range from the prior completion of foundational courses to obtaining instructor approval. The most common course requisites are prerequisites, linked courses and restrictions.

• Prerequisites

  Prerequisites

  A prerequisite is a required preparatory course or placement exam score that must be completed prior to enrolling in a course. 

  Course prerequisites are outlined in the Schedule of Classes and Catalog. 

  If you completed work outside of UCR, in order for this transfer work to satisfy a prerequisite, it must be articulated to the UCR course that meets the prerequisite requirement. Please talk to your academic advisor and the department offering your course if you have any questions.

  You can view your placement scores via R’Web in your Student Profile. Select the Prior Education and Testing link in the left navigation. You will see the course that you placed into as well as the numerical value that is used to satisfy prerequisite requirements per the Schedule of Classes.

  See additional information on placement tests.

• Linked Courses

  Linked Courses

  If a course has linked sections, it means that the course is comprised of two or more sections that you must register for simultaneously. For example: lecture and discussion; lecture and laboratory; or lecture, discussion, and workshop.

  Linked sections are lecture-specific. For example, if you register for MATH 009B, lecture section 001, you may only be able to register for discussion sections 002, 003 or 004. 

  If you do not register for all of the linked sections required for a course, you will receive an error message such as, "ADDITIONAL ACTIVITY NEEDED - This course requires enrollment in multiple sections (i.e. lecture and discussion and/or lab, etc.). Please select all required sections." 

  "LCA" means "additional lecture" and is typically associated with specific math courses.

• Restrictions

  Restrictions

  A restriction on a class means that only certain students may register for it; for example, only juniors or only art majors. 

  You may need to get an instructor's approval before you can register for a restricted class.

• Content Overlap

  Content Overlap

  For some courses students may not earn credit in both because the content has been determined by the Academic Senate to be too similar.  These courses are said to have “Content Overlap”.

  Students may not register for a course which has Content Overlap with a course they have already completed. Review the Schedule of Classes to determine if you have taken any courses with content overlap.

• Corequisites

  Corequisites

  Some courses require another course with a different subject and/or course number to be taken at the same time. Review the corequisites in the Schedule of Classes to locate whether your course has one. For example, CHEM 001A and CHEM 01LA.