We just got back from our NSC, and it was a whirlwind of activity!
We did the pre-conference day. We arrived on campus around 9:30am and visited Student Health Services to see how it works when a student gets sick. They are located in the A.P. Beutel building. An office visit is $10 regardless if you have insurance or not, and they have a pharmacy in the building for prescriptions (they don’t take insurance, but we were told prescriptions are discounted or they will send it to a local pharmacy for you). They are open Mon-Fri, 8am to 5pm. There is a dial-a-nurse service for after hours, and on their front door is a list of urgent care clinics students can visit after hours.
We also did a 30 minute tour of the Commons and a typical dorm room. If students in the residence halls want to receive mail on campus, they will need to rent a PO Box from Student Mail Services. Here is a link with their info https://reslife.tamu.edu/living/amenities/mail/
We checked out the ATM machine in the Commons, and it doesn’t partner with TransFund, so we will have to figure out another banking solution. We were hoping to keep the account in our home city and just use the ATM card, but we may have to open an account in College Station. If anyone has banking advice, I’d appreciate it.
We found great campus maps at the information desk on the first floor of Rudder Tower. They may offer you the map in their magazine, but ask for just the map. They are compact, fold-out maps which helped us navigate around campus. We walked from the MSC to the dorm, on to the new Zachary engineering building, and a few other buildings we knew we were likely to have classes in. It really made the campus seem smaller and much more manageable by learning our way around a bit.
We visited the bookstore, but they had the textbook section closed so we couldn’t check out the books. From there we went to Kyle Field for the pre-conference check-in at 3:30pm. People started lining up about an hour early, and the first 8-10 people were in the shade but the rest of the line was in the sun, and it was hot! Once inside, you go up the escalator, and the students go to one side of the room while the parents go to the other side to check in. It was well organized, smooth, and fast. Then you go back to Rudder to get your student ID. If you ordered a sports pass, take your ID and go back to Kyle Field (entry 6, I think) to pick up your sports pass. There was no line for it while we were there.
By this time, it was around 5pm, and we were tired from walking around campus for 7 or so hours, so we skipped the evening social and went to eat and then back to our hotel. Since we were checked in, we didn’t have to report the first official day until 9:40am. I was worried we may have trouble parking since those who didn’t attend the pre-conference day had to arrive at 8am, but we had no trouble finding a spot in the Cain parking garage. The barcode on our parking pass wouldn’t scan, so we just typed in the last 6 digits followed by the pound sign each time, and that worked perfectly.
We did all the day 1 mandatory events, then left at 5:15pm. Engineering students had to report the next morning at 7:30am to the Rudder water fountain to be taken to the Math Placement Exam location, so we again skipped the optional evening activities. We had dinner and tried to get to bed somewhat early. They had not opened up new seats or class sections before we went to bed.
Day 2 was the engineering math placement exam, then a group advising slideshow presentation. Although the schedule said class registration started at 2:30pm, they had all the students report to their assigned registration room at 1:30pm. You will want to refer to your campus map to find the registration rooms. The kids are given the building and room number (and maybe a small map) but many of the buildings are far from Rudder and over by the new Zachary building. We didn’t have as much time as we thought we would have for lunch which meant little time to go over possible schedules again (new seats were opened in existing sections that morning).
I posted this on another thread, but it is worth repeating: if you’ve been admitted to an honors program, check your Howdy portal under “My Record” then in the center look for “Student Information” and click on it. There is a line for “Honors Cohort” that should indicate your honors program. If it says NA, you need to contact your honors program asap. There were a few honors kids at our NSC that didn’t have the honors designation in the system, and they couldn’t register until it was added. By the time it was added, some of the classes were already full, and they had to redo their entire planned schedule.
Make sure you have your CRNs written down and ready to go. Have a few backup CRNs in case your first choice is full. The kids who were prepared got out pretty quickly, but many students hadn’t looked up classes until they got there, and they were having a difficult time trying to figure it all out. My heart went out to them - it was hard on them and their parents who were waiting down the hall.
A huge THANK YOU to everyone who posted all the helpful tips and information - we felt as prepared as we could be. It was a long 3 days, but we feel part of the TAMU family now and can’t wait for this fall!