<p>Hi! How is the academic advising at Rice? Thanks for any info!</p>
<p>I can’t answer specifically, but recognize that this year they are trying a new approach. I presume you are responding to the email about the “test”.</p>
<p>No, I just wanted to hear from some current students as to how they felt about the academic advising that they’ve received. Thanks!</p>
<p>The Office of Academic Advising is making great strides, especially through their O-Week programs. Each O-Week group has a faculty advisor (mine was actually President Leebron himself!) who will advise students academically and otherwise. Each person is also assigned a divisional advisor during O-Week who is always willing to help out. There are three O-Week PAA’s, or Peer Academic Advisors, and a number more throughout the year. These are current undergrads who are trained specifically by the OAA to provide accurate and helpful advice to other students as needed–the logic behind this is that students will be giving advice anyway, so why not train them to do it better than they would alone?</p>
<p>Furthermore, once a student at Rice declares his/her major, he/she will be assigned a major advisor who will guide him/her through the major and other graduation requirements.</p>
<p>Finally, there are Academic Fellows in each college that provide greater expertise in specific areas of study; these are more geared towards excelling in a specific academic area rather than academic planning in general, but they are a very helpful resource when deciding if a specific major/area is right for you.</p>
<p>I’ve found PAA’s to be the most helpful, personally, because they are often people who I’m good friends with anyway since they are students in my college. They earnestly care about my choices and want me to do well, so they provide some of the best advice I’ve received in regards to planning schedules, picking a major, etc.</p>
<p>In my experience, the academic advising here is getting stronger and stronger (during O-Week I felt it was a tad lackluster–not “aggressive” enough in making sure I knew what I was doing–but since then I have noticed many changes there). I obviously can’t speak for other universities, but I really appreciate the system Rice has set up for academic advising.</p>
<p>Hopefully this’ll help. (Disclaimer: I’m running on little sleep, so I might have missed something. If so, my apologies! Hopefully someone else will be able to correct me or add to my post.)</p>
<p>I’m a PAA. To clarify, there is no change with regards to academic advising in the fall. (The only major change this fall pertains to the writing program as a well as a few technical graduation rules. This said, I have heard rumors about some sort of new diagnostic exam…but I don’t know any details as to bigger changes.)</p>
<p>Each incoming freshman will be assigned a Divisional Advisor and they will meet with that advisor during O-week. Divisional Advisors are not directly a part of o-week groups, but are faculty associates at the residential colleges. They know all about the different majors in their schools as well as graduation requirements. Even if your DA is not in your department of interest, they will know people in that department you can talk to.</p>
<p>In order to declare a major, you must meet with a major advisor. You will continue meeting with that advisor regularly to ensure you are meeting your graduation requirements. Of course, any professor will be glad to talk to any student about what it’s like to major in their department, so you have lots of department specific resources before you declare a major. I have yet to declare a major, but have met with numerous professors, regardless of whether or not they were my advisor, just to talk to them about different departments.</p>
<p>The PAA program is designed to supplement the faculty advising program, and it is phenomenal. It is one of the largest programs of this type in the country. Most students get a lot of their advising help from PAAs.</p>
<p>I don’t know how it works in other majors, but I have not found that we have someone in psychology who really guides us through the major. I couldn’t name my advisor right now, and I believe to declare I just had to go up to someone and get a signature, no discussion required. However, this is not to say that I haven’t had guidance. I have formed good relationships with a lot of the psychology faculty so I always had a lot of people to turn to. I just wouldn’t say that the formal “major advisor” thing for psychology (again don’t know about other majors) is very structured or helpful (although I’m sure if I knew who the major advisor was they would be willing to meet and help). All the other things people have talked about (PAAs and such) are excellent resources though.</p>
<p>Academic advising varies wildly from major to major. I know for a fact that engineering academic advising is solid, and a friend who is a history major sees an advisor once every semester. I personally have been incredibly disappointed with the level (or lack thereof) of advising I have received after my freshman year. You would think a school as small as Rice would be able to have its faculty members that are undergrad advisors simply send a courtesy email to each student who is majoring in their department and ask the student to make an appointment to see them to talk about their plans for courses for the next semester, as well as to make sure they are on track to graduate. Simply pathetic that there is absolutely no outreach from profs in some departments.</p>
<p>In regards to the last two comments, Rice doesn’t require any student to meet with an advisor to register for classes. For those of you familiar with ABET accreditation, this is actual against their rules. Accordingly, the school of engineering “requires” upperclassmen to meet with advisors in order to register for certain classes by closing open registration. This may explain why engineers have a more structured advising program than other majors.</p>
<p>Regardless of your major, Rice students are expected to seek out their advisors and professors and general. Most of them will not send you “come talk to me” emails regarding advising or course performance. They treat you as adults, and thus, that is your responsibility now. I have yet to find a professor who will not talk to me about classes, degree plans, their research, etc. However, I have approached almost all of them myself. Some advisors will reach out to students (I heard about some freshman finding candy in their mailboxes around finals last semester with a note from their DA), but most operate the other way.</p>
<p>I hope that helps!</p>
<p>Just to be clear, I never expected my major advisor to seek me out and I really don’t have a problem with never having met with them. I was merely pointing out that in some majors, a “major advisor” doesn’t really mean anything as any professor will meet with you to help out. As I mentioned, I have received plenty of advice from the many profs that I am close with and I’m actually really glad that I didn’t have to officially meet with someone before I registered for classes every semester. The psych major requirements are not very hard to figure out and I was fine managing it mainly by myself.</p>