A question for current/former students & parents – what is the college’s policy on switching/changing academic advisors?
Are you aware of any examples of students requesting changes? Do you know if the college frowns upon such requests?
Thank you in advance.
On the one hand, it happens all the time – turnover is pretty high among the academic advisors. One of my kids had a different one every year.
On the other hand, I have never heard of anyone switching academic advisors because they wanted to. I suspect it’s not that easy. The advisosrs have a huge caseload. If some became more popular than others (which of course is usually the case) and it was easy to switch, things would become unbalanced pretty fast.
Also, they’re not that important. I have heard folklore about incredibly good counselors, but they were the exception, not the rule. For my children and their friends, their advisors were basically a once-a-quarter 10-minute check-in and rubbber stamp. There wasn’t enough going on, and there wasn’t enough that might have gone better, to warrant switching. By the time you know that you dislike your advisor, about 80% of the substantive interaction you will ever have with them has already happened.
I don’t really know, but I imagine that the standard for changing advisors is probably close to the standard for firing the advisor for cause. If your advisor has done something so incompetent or so inappropriate as to merit dismissal, you might be able to get the advisor fired, and you would be assigned to a new advisor.
Major advisors became much more important starting second year.
@Lucy11 - is there a reason your student wishes to have another advisor? He/she might want to bring that up at the advising session during O-Week.
However, I’d agree with JHS’s post, especially during first year when you are completing required sequences for the most part. The advisors are really there to make sure you are fulfilling your Core requirements and any pre-reqs for your major (as necessary). You probably wouldn’t get a significantly different experience by switching. And yeah, the turnover can be pretty high. My D was on her 2nd one by the end of first year.
Registration for Winter and Spring will be much easier as you are auto-enrolled in part two of any required sequences (Hum, Sosc, Calc, Civ, etc.).
If your student wants a jump start on the major and has questions, he/she should contact the person in charge of undergraduate studies in that department.
DD’s advisor (apparently new to the role) was a nice person but not at all useful to her. Didn’t really help in any way. Worst thing advisor did was ecommend that she take the weak SOSC sequence (without telling her it was the weak sequence, and simply because she mentioned that she liked psychology). Fortunately, from these boards and from off-list discussion, I knew that this was the weak SOSC sequence (generally for people trying to avoid reading and writing), and she took Classics instead. Harder, but much more satisfying for her. I think that the advisors are not very useful for most people. They can keep you from failing to graduate on time, though, if you’re not able to understand the requirements for the core from reading them.
If there’s some big personality conflict, I imagine you could get it changed. But in general, it’s probably easier to just do whatever you need to do with the advisor, and get real advice from asking upperclassmen, resident head, etc.
It seems that the advisors are there to help the students navigate the system, and like others mentioned up thread, to be cognizant of fulfilling requirements and other technical aspects of the curriculum. From our experience last year, they were great in being able to put a student in a class or take them out, but as far as recommendations, the advisors probably wouldn’t know since they’re not students, and may only know about class particulars through hearsay. It’s probably best for students to ask advice on the vibe/info of classes elsewhere, maybe upperclassmen, or alumni, etc.
In any case, I hope it all works out for everyone.
For what advisors do, I really don’t understand why they need to meet with students in person. DD made an appointment with her advisor in 2nd year, because when she started, they had to meet with their advisor once in 2nd year, in order to be able to register for classes in 3rd year. After she’d had the appointment, the college sent out an announcement that students no longer needed to meet with their advisors in 2nd year. At the appointment, the advisor gave her a form showing what the college sees about which classes she’s taken - how many credits she has, and how each credit is getting classified (as a particular type of core class, a class for the major or a minor, or an elective). The form is not automatically accurate (they didn’t classify a class that could be be used for her major as such), but they are pretty formulaic. If each student could just see that form online, there might be no need for advisor contact for the majority of students. I think they should still have someone specific you CAN contact, but you might not need to, and you certainly wouldn’t need to do it in person. From our POV, the way the academic advisor system works now has 2 disadvantages: kids have to meet with the advisor, and if they forget to do so, or wait late enough to make an appointment that there is no available appointment that works for the student, then the student is apparently VERY severely penalized by not being able to register for classes. This is particularly a problem for kids for ADHD, for example. And it’s not for any benefit to anyone. Every time, the advisor just said, “okay, you’re good” and that was it after DD traipsed over for the mandatory an in-person appointment. The second problem is that it gives the illusion that an ACADEMIC ADVISOR is ADVISING you on ACADEMICS. But they’re not - at least, you can’t assume that they are giving you actual advice about academics that are appropriate for you. They’re just checking off the boxes as to whether you’ve satisfied the core … again, something that could be done automatically for most students with a form available online to them in the portal. Someone might even assume that an academic advisor is someone you can form some kind of relationship with (this does happen at some colleges). And certainly for DD, and seemingly for most people who post on CC, that’s just not the case.
One thing DD’s advisor was able to do was (after a couple of requests on DD’s part) fix an error in credits she’ been given for accreditation test. As a practical matter, this was important. But it probably could have been fixed by anyone at any time, since she was given 2 credits for the same course, instead of 1 credit for each of 2 courses. She certainly didn’t need to meet with anyone to get that data entry error fixed.
Thanks, everyone, for the helpful feedback! In our case, to our delight, it initially seemed that my DC’s summer advisor (who’s been with the college for a long time & knows a lot about student programs) was continuing on as a regular advisor.
Then the College reassigned my DC to a different advisor (someone new to school) in the middle of September. Last I heard, my DC met with a substitute instead as the new advisor had some conflicts during the O-week or something like that. . .
@Lea111 Could you tell me which is the weak SOSC sequence? Generally speaking, I think my DC does well when he takes classes that are interesting and challenging. Want to make sure he has full information before he makes his selection next year.
@Lucy11 my son’s summer advisor mentioned to him that he’d be assigned to another advisor for the academic year. So that was probably a pretty typical situation that your DC experienced. And while I’m not positive, I suspect my son’s current advisor is new to the school as well. My D (class of '21 so same year as @lea111’s DD) had an advisor who left before the academic year had finished. It can be a bit frustrating. However, this is the third year in with the larger class size so hopefully the College has ironed out those problems.
@Lucy11 Totally get it. Mine DD is the same way. Best classes for her are those with engaging professors excited about the material they’re teaching, with students excited about the material as well. So any class that has a whiff of “this is what the STEM kids who wish they didn’t have to take core humanities classes do to avoid those” - that’s what she didn’t and doesn’t take. The Mind SOSC sequence is reputed to be like that. It doesn’t necessarily mean the class as designed is useless, but it’s very different from the “classic” SOSC sequences (which are Power, Self, and Classics) and not at all a substitute for them. And it has that reputation of being too many kids who’d have been happy to avoid SOSC, reading, and writing altogether. We heard this repeatedly. YMMV. (If you search this board for SOSC and Mind, you can probably find some of the old posts by others.) SSI is also very different from the 3 classic SOSC sequences. The Global Society sequence is completely new, and I don’t know anything about it.
^ We ate at my son’s house table last Sat., and Mind was definitely described by the O-Aides as being “easier”. It has quite the rep for that! So is SSI (in that some of the reading and writing will be in the form of conducting statistical analyses so might be “easier” for some math/stats kids). But you might not want to choose your Sosc. sequence based on reputation for ease or difficulty. Sosc. is a mandatory 3-quarter sequence. You are stuck with it for an entire academic year. So you are best off pursuing the subject and/or set of readings that actually interest you. Come spring quarter - or perhaps as early as mid-winter quarter - you will not care about reputation half as much as whether you are enjoying the class.
The purpose of Sosc. is to help you learn “social science thinking.” The College may offer new sequences and fields of interest, but the goal of this sequence is basically the same, regardless of whether you enroll in Classics or Mind or whatever. College advising in the past has tended to recommend that you “mix it up” a bit - ie take something like Classics if you are planning to be a STEM major, or SSI if you are planning a major in Philosophy. But it’s also ok (but certainly not necessary) to choose a Sosc. sequence that aligns with your intended major. It’s all good.
I think the assignment of advisors is a bit of “luck of the draw” thing. My son had an erratic advisor initially- delays in responding, curt behavior- who thankfully moved on. He is happy with his current advisor who was able to guide him meaningfully on whether to take Greek vs additional Latin courses, having a classics background himself.
@Tiglathpileser Thanks. I agree it’s “luck of the draw”, and hope that it eventually works out for my DC. (I do think it was strange to switch advisors without explanations AFTER the school said they’d made permanent assignments.)
There is a fair number of new staff at UChicago – understandable given its recent growth, both in terms of size and the breadth of program offerings. I just hope that they can continue to keep the quality as high and consistent as possible.
I think those that find success with an AA are those students that run the process. I’m sorry it isn’t better, but in my experience and now my sons’ experiences at multiple different academic institutions, they have found that they come in with a few options and 1 or 2 questions. You’d think at a price tag of $80k/year you’d get almost concierge level service, but that isn’t the case.
What my son has found though is the career advising office, or at least the Careers in Law office is pretty good and helping you through the whole law profession, including preparing you for the gauntlet of law school applications.
^ Career Advancement, which runs the Careers In programs, is a separate office from College Advising. And it’s overseen by Nondorf, who is as responsible for graduating professionally successful alums as he is for putting together the “strongest, most awesome class ever!” every year. The College has made Career Advancement a big showpiece at their admission events. It’s likely that they have invested heavily in improving and shoring up that component of college life. It’s quite possible that this has happened at the expense of other stuff like general academic advising, so we are seeing more turnover and more new (and less experienced) advisors than existed in the past.