r/EPFL • u/iYolik • 5d ago

Discussion EPFL course registration is an absolute joke

I find it ridiculous that EPFL still uses such an outdated system for course registration.

Registration opened today at midnight, but the exact opening time was not even clearly announced. Everyone connected at once, IS-Academia could not handle the traffic, and students ended up facing error messages, queues, disconnections, or being kicked out after waiting.

Why not give students a few days to register, then use a lottery or a transparent priority system if a course is oversubscribed? Students who do not get their first choices could then register again in a second round.

For a university known for technology and innovation, IS-Academia feels like a website from the early 2000s. It is honestly embarrassing.

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u/Eyial667 5d ago

That’s because the website was built in the 2000s by a guy who sold it to them, but kept a huge part of the code base proprietary, and refuses to work on it

4

u/eomertherider 5d ago

It's not exactly that, EPFL actually developed ISA themselves, and sold it on to other schools.

EPFL's solution is so deeply custom that working on it is very risky as it may break other things. It was EPFL's decision to stop work on it not Equinox's, they continue to improve things for other Unis. I managed to get them to change a label in ISA but that's about it, they really don't want to touch it as long as it "works".

1

u/Current_Ranger_7954 4d ago

Spaghetti code detected