FAQs

Pre-Bidding Topics

If you can't find the info you're searching for, please contact the Law Registrar for help.

Q: I am bidding for the first time. Is there something that explains the Northwestern Law class bidding system?
A: Yes, detailed information can be found in the Bidding Instructions, and the Bidding Tutorial contains step-by-step instructions with screenshots.

Q: What if I have a hold on my account?
A: A hold will prevent your bid results from turning into actual enrollment. When that happens, you will lose your bid results and your bid points. You should resolve any holds with Student Accounts or Student Health prior to the start of bidding. A registration hold placed on your file because you have not designated an emergency contact will be removed immediately and automatically after you update the emergency contact info. If you have any holds, a notification will be visible on your Tasks tile on CAESAR. 

Q: How do I find classes that will meet graduation requirements?
A: Classes are tagged with attributes such as Experiential Learning, Research Writing, etc.  The Class Search Tutorial explains how to search for classes with specific attributes. 

Q: Is bidding like gambling?
A: No, gambling would be if we flipped a coin, weighting it based on how much you bid, to see who won a seat.  Bidding isn't gambling.  Bidding is an auction where you can express your strength of class preference through the amount of points you allocate to each bid you place.

Q: What about inflation; I heard there is inflation in the course point costs?
A:  Inflation would mean that everything sold for more, and thus the value of a point went down, and that could only happen if we introduced more points into the system (which we do not do). What is true is that the most popular classes may go for more points than they used to. So if there’s a class you really, really want that’s a very popular class, you might have to give up bidding for other somewhat popular things in order to get that very popular class.

This means the system is working! If you get something of very high cost, you take other things of lower cost, and your total overall cost is equal to everyone else's who is similarly situated. This is extremely fair.

Also notice that if the points for one class are super high, it must be that the points for other classes that used to be somewhat high are lower, because there are a fixed number of points overall for people to spend.  In other words, this is a question of distributive justice, and while not very individual gets everything they want, overall, the distribution is fair.