Conclusions
Some majors benefit significantly less from Planner - especially those with good advisors (Biomed Eng, pre-med, ATEC)
It would be good to focus our user interviews on ECS first due to the first point
It might not be that hard to add support for CS masters
[Did Not Get Name]
Year: 2 (Sophomore), 2026 grad date
...
Planner is not a good fit for students that can just ask their advisor easily. Especially if their advisor can just walk them through their courses.
Aroosh 
Biomed, freshman, transferred a bunch of AP creds
His advisors were quite responsive
For classes specific to his major, his advisors is really good
Last time registration, set up meeting with advisor and got all his courses figured out
Has a flow chart (similar to the CS one) that he pins up on his wall and he scratches it off
Only thing that’s kinda confusing with the flow chart is the cores
Want to do core outside of UTD
Wants to know if he can substitute one core class for another class for same credit
Suggestions:
Should diff between honors and nonhonors
Why go to flow chart or transcript when he could use planner? Planner = convenience
Highlight the necessary classes in search
Loais
ATEC and Sophomore
With ATEC, degree plans depends on concentration, some courses required for all concentrations
Does plan her degree
Her advisors send her this Excel sheet that she converted to a Google sheet
A list of charts where each charts is a semester and for each course there’s a dropdown of courses you can take
Advisors are usually responsive but less responsive this year due to 2 of them leaving
A lot of ATEC people don’t know that this spreadsheet exists, so if she talks to an ATEC person who doesn’t know, this is the first thing they recommend to someone
Advisors just add transfer credits to excel sheet and sends it to her
No real challenges, gets early registration so she doesn’t have to worry about it
Seems like Planner would not be useful to her at all.
Anthea Abreo - axa210122@utdallas.edu
CS masters
Never talks to her advisor, just talks to past people who have done the masters
Also takes courses she finds interesting
Spoke to someone who did the masters before her and got an Excel sheet from them
Feels like the advisors are so busy there’s no point
Resources she uses when planning her degree:
Ratemyprof
UTD Catalog
Friends
Sometimes is hard to get the courses she wants, then have to shift the courses aroudn
Had to do CS prereqs because she coming from EE
Master degrees work pretty much same as undergraduate degrees but they have tracks
People will often take overlapping courses and switch tracks to boost their GPA. People can change tracks until their second-to-last semester
Eli - eliyel.abera on Discord
Data Science, Freshman
For planning, he just looks at undergrad catalog and keeps it in his head
Has thought about putting it on a Google Sheet but doesn’t know a good way to organize it
Some classes he doesn’t need to take but is going to take because it’ll hep him with internships
Haven’t talked to advisors much
Had 1 meeting with an advisor to get some classes sorted out but he had to do everything himself
Wouldn’t really consider planning the degree elsewhere
Nathan
Freshman (Junior by credit), IP = International Political Economy
International relations, micro/macroeconomics
Degree plans are a mess
A few courses are actually IP
Lots of classes from other majors
Electives are from Polysci
Uses Orion schedule thing to plan degree (only plans one semester at a time)
Only looks at semester by semester
Semesters are very proactive - they come to classes to talk to them, plan events, and talk about what is the plan for registration next semester
Very small major so advisors are able to do that