Hundreds of students were able to register for spring 2018 classes on CalCentral earlier than their scheduled enrollment appointment as a result of a data entry error.

Campus spokesperson Adam Ratliff said in an email that even though the system was working as programmed, the campus’s error pushed 401 students’ registration dates up earlier.

Campus seniors Maddy Montgomery and Shilpa Ati were affected by the registration change and expressed that proper enrollment is imperative for seniors to ensure they can graduate on time.

According to Ratliff, the “premature” enrollments were cleared by the Office of the Registrar on Monday. Montgomery and Ati said, however, that they were both able to enroll early on Tuesday and are still registered for those classes.

“Your Phase 1 is a very important thing and to register for classes is kind of a big deal,” Montgomery said. “(My enrollment date) changed by a whole week, and I didn’t get any sort of notification.”

According to Montgomery, her enrollment time was originally Oct. 24, but on Oct. 16, she found that her Phase 1 enrollment date had changed to Oct. 17, leaving her little time to contact her major advisor for course enrollment access.

Ati said she only noticed the change in her enrollment date 10 minutes after the new enrollment time.

“I just feel bad that some people found out later on and if they weren’t as lucky as me (they didn’t happen to) check at (the right) time,” Ati said. “It’s already difficult enough to get into classes without not realizing that your time had changed.”

According to Ratliff, Cal Student Central is currently working with the impacted students to remind them to enroll at their correct scheduled enrollment time.

“We apologize for any inconvenience, difficulties, or confusion this human error may cause these students,” Ratliff said in an email. “We are working to ensure that in the future students are not incorrectly allowed to register for classes prior to their assigned time.”

Contact Phil Zhang at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @philzhangDC.