Now that graduation is done, I’m ready to start planning for our Bama Bound session next week. The whole family (siblings are 16 and 9) is headed down to visit the campus. Everyone except our DS will be staying at an offsite hotel. We are thinking about exploring the campus and area around the campus. We did the tour last October and I’m thinking it is not necessary to sign up for the Parent session. What do you think, will I be missing out on anything? Also, we are going to start looking at the schedule builder to come up a Plan A, B and C schedule.
If you are able to go to Bama Bound. You should go. It is nothing like the general tour, They give the parents a whole schedule of their own and it is geared to you the parent and what you need to know in order to help support your student while at The Univeristy of Alabama. I sent you a message. Please check your box. Roll Tide!
Ps. your 16 year old can do the sibling program and your 9 year old can go along with you.
I have two sons at UA and I went to each parent orientation session. I thought the first was very informative, and the second was more fun. Plus I think it was helpful that I was in the registration information session with my son. If you are there anyways, why not do it?
Highly recommend that one parent attends the parent sessions if at all possible, particularly if this is your first student going away to college. I greatly appreciated all the sessions, and loved meeting lots of other new UA parents! Wonderful experience.
Well you can do the things on the checklist your student was sent in their Crimson email. Immunizations sheet filled out and scanned in plus a passport pic for their Action Card uploaded. Yesterday they had a super informative chat on Blackboard for OOS. That should be archived shortly I hope as it was chock full of good stuff. I find out about all this stuff thru the many emails they’ve sent the last week or so thru your students account.
My D is a rising senior, so I went to Bama Bound back in 2012. To be honest, I didn’t learn anything at the Bama Bound parent sessions that I didn’t already know from this forum (which I think was more active back then) and the UA website and catalog, which I had read extensively. I went in much more informed than the average parent, though, and that was clear from talking to others and listening to the questions that were asked. That said, it was just D and me and I didn’t really have anything else to do, so I enjoyed the parent sessions and didn’t feel as though my time was wasted. Also, the BB parents sessions are nothing like the tour. I personally think your 9 year old would be bored stiff at the parent sessions and I wouldn’t even consider taking a child that age to those. I’m not familiar with the sibling program for the 16 year old.
Being familiar with your student’s academic requirements and having a desired schedule and a couple alternative plans is a very good idea. We found the advising at BB to be sorely lacking. D got about 3 minutes with an advisor (I’m not exaggerating) and a few of the things she was told were dead wrong. I suspect the advisors in some departments are better than those in others, but no advisor will ever have the vested interest in a student’s schedule, or the knowledge of what the student wants to achieve, as the student him/herself, so it’s important for the student to take the time to get to know the requirements.
Thanks for everyone’s input! I guess I need to join the parent’s UA facebook page to get the scoop on which classes/teachers to take. We will be working on Plan A, B and C for his schedule this weekend. My DS is in the reserve pool for CBH and is in the STEM MBA program. He is a Chemical Engineer major and wants to minor or major in German. The schedule builder won’t allow for a minor. It seems a bit complicated for us to figure out his schedule, we need an advisor that is knowledgeable about everything listed above in helping us plan his 4 year plan.
Schedule Builder might not help (it only looks at 1, current semester), but can you use Degree Works’ scenarios to help w/ the minor path? I don’t know if pre-BB students can look at DW or not, but it’s a suggestion for future, no doubt. Good luck with your choices!
This is a tip for seeing the campus…if you have not already done so, take a leisurely walk or drive around the campus at night. It is well lighted and quite beautiful after dark. I particularly love when the fountain is lit. In my opinion this is a must do photo opportunity. Don’t forget to stop by Dunkin Donuts for a coffee and perhaps a chance to chat with some students.
I had no idea there even was a DD in T’town. There are THREE!!!
Oh, how long we Northeasterners waited for that first Dunkin Donuts to open…and then finally they arrived on campus. So glad that they they have done well enough to now have three stores open in T-town.
Great place for coffee, a late snack, or those famous k-cups. By the way, the k-cups (until recently) were only sold exclusively at Dunkin Donut shops but they changed their policy and you can now purchase the k-cups online and at retail shops. I recently saw that the k-cups are for sale at the Publix supermarket in Northport.
Lol…DD. don’t post this on the FB parent page. 
^^^ afraid all the coffee/donuts will be goinggoing gone :))
I’m late to the party, but for future thread-readers, here are my tips from our experience last week.
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Spend serious energy working out a Plan A, B, and C for scheduling. Do not expect any significant advising during BB. You need to be proactive to get any substantial advising. If you ask for it and corner someone, you can get questions answered, but there won’t be any sit-down-and-talk advising.
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Bring sweatshirts (they are serious about AC in Alabama!)
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Bring an extra blanket and a pillow if you are staying in the dorms. I didn’t, and I survived, but I’d have been more comfy with another blanket and more than one pillow.
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Your kid’s UA ID and PW (the ones s/he uses to log in to mybama) are the wifi access logins. You need this to use your laptop(s) to work on scheduling the night before registration! (Parent proxy login info may or may not work. I didn’t try it.)
That’s all I can think of at the moment. All in all, our BB experience was excellent save the lack of schedule advising in the ENGR group. (I think other colleges might do more.) Be sure to work on scheduling topics, research professors, consider schedules, print out flow charts, study them, etc prior to BB if possible.
Roll tide!
Just got back from our session. I agree with mmom99 on all of her tips! Advising was lacking, my son had no interaction with an actual professor. Very disappointing. Everything else was fine. My son is going into chemE., he is not coming in as a freshman (40+ dual credit and AP) and we have many questions! I guess we will be calling and or posting our questions.
Please post your questions - many here can help answer them!
The actual registration session is just that: registration. All questions about courses and logistics should be worked out prior to that session - questions such as: what do I register for if I don’t have AP scores yet…what Calc do I take…what elective should I take to satisfy x…do you recommend applying this AP credit in this instance…
Students (and to lesser extent their parents) should have printed out their flowcharts (if available) for their major and be familiar with their major requirements…and have at least a couple different plans/schedules worked up PRIOR to BB. BB is not where ‘advisors’ work out a schedule for students - students work that out on their own. If I recall, there were a couple of break-out sessions earlier in the day, prior to the actual registration session, where students had the opportunity to ask their questions. (I know in 2012 there was a session specifically for eng’g students, and son was able to talk with a dept chair about math choices and physics choices.) If this has changed, I’d be surprised.
Ok, so my son said yes there were about 125 engineering students in the auditorium. He said that there were about 40 parents as well. There was 5 professors and a few students to answer questions. He said it was just too many people there and there was only 20 minutes to talk to a professor. So in his words “33 people per instructor for 5 instructors which means 1.65 min for everybody to ask question(s)”. That’s if everyone was quick with their questions…
Another factor is that there were students coming in at a much different level than him. He noticed that there were kids that did not have the calculus B/C, AP Lang and other courses. So there were many basic questions that needed to be answered, that did not pertain to him. So one question we had was concerning Chem 125 class he signed up for, what if he changes to MechE will he need to take the ME121 class?