The best way to get a good schedule is to know what courses you want to sign up for ahead of time, and register in them the second you are able to do so. First year is always a crapshoot because so many students are registering for the courses.
The good news for first years is that plenty of people will drop out, so if you continue to monitor the courses, there is a decent chance a spot will open up during the first few days of classes. There should also be plenty of different courses a first year can take that should count towards a degree, even if it means taking a course you hadn't originally planned on taking in year one.
The only real way to mitigate these issues is to sit down for a couple of hours before your registration time and map out what classes you want to take. It can be a pretty painstaking process, because you might have to click on every single class to figure out the pre-reqs.
For UofC's registration you can put your courses in your shopping cart before your registration opens. I always do that, and then sit there and hit refresh on my browser until the second my registration opens. Even with all that, though, I've still ended up with a couple of pretty annoying semesters.
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