<p>Hi,
If anyone has any helpful websites or resources for the transitioning into college life, mostly for me, the mom, but, also I want to be able to help my daughter too. I never went away to college, other than taking some accounting courses. I don't know how much I should get involved in the choices of courses, or lack thereof.....
Anyway, there are many "unknowns", both for me as well as my daughter and wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions. Thank you!
Cathy</p>
<p>Read the book “Letting Go”. It’s great (I think that’s the title).</p>
<p>Usually they recommend entering freshmen to start with general prerequisites and intro classes for anything they anticipate they might major in. Some of the very common freshman year classes seem to be: Chemistry, Calc, English, Econ, Biology, Physics, and Psychology. The school should guide her into picking out reasonable classes if she has no idea.</p>
<p>^To second qwerty, your daughter should have an assigned academic advisor, who will help her in class selections. As to anything else, just let your daughter know that you are there for her if she want to discuss anything, but that you will wait for her to come to you; don’t be the helicopter mom (only in extreme and rare circumstances is helicoptering acceptable).</p>
<p>Check your daughter’s college website for “Parents and Family Pages”. There is generally a lot of information/support there. Also, colleges often send email newsletters throughout the year (we’ve received them from both our son’s midsized public school and our daughter’s small private lac) with information, including what your student may be going through at certain times and what you can do to help.</p>
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<p>It’s: Letting Go: Parents Guide to Understanding the College Years.</p>
<p>Recommended by a college psychologist at New Student Orientation this summer (students were elsewhere during this talk). There’s a section on how college is different now than it was when we went, the transition time and getting a broader perspective on college (i.e., it’s more than about the grades). I thought it was worth reading (ordered it through Borders).</p>
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I, and I think most parents on CC from what I gather form their posts, don’t get involved at all in their selection of particular courses. The student will typically meet with an academic advisor and determine what courses fit with their major and/or interests. This makes it easy for you of course, and helps the student take more ownership of the course of their life and gain more independence.</p>
<p>I did discuss majors with my kids and made sure to review all of the majors offered and see what they eliminated based on their interests. </p>
<p>They, however, are the ones who decided on their majors, the colleges to attend, the courses to take, the scheduling for those courses (when offered in multiple time slots), whether to get an on-campus job or not (they both chose to have jobs), what it would be, the hours for those jobs, the hours they’d study, how late they’d stay up, and pretty much everything else. </p>
<p>As far as the transition to living on-campus away from home, there’s likely little needed from you for this as well since all they really need are some basic items (bedding, lamp, laptop, etc.) for their part of the room. </p>
<p>Your involvement will be emotional support when needed, encouragement, and a willingness to back off of pushing for grades and studying times since it’s not HS anymore.</p>
<p>I don’t think you should get involved in course choices unless your advice is asked or unless your comments are fairly broad and non-specific in nature (eg don’t overload yourself with 3 science labs).</p>