Staring at an empty four-year plan is overwhelming. You need 120+ credits, gen-ed wildcards, major sequences with tight prerequisites, and courses that only run in spring. Orbit’s Suggest plan feature drafts a full semester-by-semester layout from your declared programs and transcript history, respects prerequisite order, and leaves you with something you can edit instead of a blank grid.
Why starting from scratch does not scale
Hand-building eight semesters means constantly cross-checking the audit, catalog offerings, and what you already took. Miss one gateway course in freshman year and junior schedules collapse. Suggest plan automates the tedious packing: it discharges requirements you already satisfied, fills gen-ed gaps with sensible wildcards, and schedules the rest under credit load limits you choose.
What the engine uses
- Majors and minors declared in Settings, including specializations
- Completed and in-progress courses from your transcript import
- Prerequisite chains and term offering data from the UMD catalog
- Your credit load targets, plan horizon, and whether the current term stays locked
How to run Suggest plan
- Confirm your majors and minors in Settings.
- Open Four-Year Plan and click Suggest plan (or Suggest four-year plan in the menu).
- Pick a mode, set ideal and max credits per term, and choose your start term.
- Review the generated semesters and diagnostics, then apply to your plan sheet.
Three modes, in plain English
- New plan: start a fresh sheet while keeping completed transcript history. Best when you want a clean roadmap.
- Add-on: keep courses you already placed in future terms and fill the gaps around them. Best when you have partial planning done.
- Replace: rebuild forward from a chosen term, preserving everything before it. Best after a major or track change mid-degree.
After you apply
A suggested plan is a draft, not a contract. Edit terms, swap electives, and let Orbit’s prerequisite tracing keep watching for ordering mistakes. For how those warnings work, see How Orbit Catches Prerequisite Problems on Your Four-Year Plan.