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Course allocation is the problem of allocating seats in university courses among students. Many universities impose an upper bound on the number of students allowed to register to each course, in order to ensure that the teachers can give sufficient attention to each individual student. Since the demand for some courses is higher than the upper bound, a natural question is which students should be allowed to register to each course.
Many institutions allow students to register on a first come, first served basis. However, this may lead to unfair outcomes: a student who happens to be near his/her computer when registration starts can manage to register to all the most wanted courses, while a student who comes too late might find that all wanted courses are already full and be able to register only to less-wanted courses. To mitigate this unfairness, many institutions use more sophisticated allocation mechanisms.