Has anyone gone to a NSC that will be in Blinn Team this year? How was it like? and do you have to visit both Blinn and A&M? My biggest concern is registering for classes. I know what major I want to pursue and professional phase. If you have any more comments just about NSC in general let me know!
Hi! My Dear Daughter attended NSC last week. This was my second Aggie daughter, my first Blinn-TEAM daughter. The NSC programs were very similar to what they were for my first Aggie, Class of 2016. There was only a little Blinn-TEAM specific info on the last day. You do not have to visit Blinn during NSC. The Blinn-TEAM advisors give a program on the morning of the last day. Here is what we experienced, etc.
We arrived on the TAMU campus around 3:30 pm on her Pre conference day (the day before the NSC actually started) so that we could check in, have her TAMU student ID made, pick up her sports pass, etc. and not be rushed & crowded the next morning.
We stayed at a hotel off campus, which was comfortable, but further away from campus than I expected (I must have looked at the map wrong when I booked the room) AND the worst part was that the hotel wifi was down so my daughter couldn’t use her computer to look up info on classes. She could see some info on her phone, but it would have been easier if she could have used her computer in the hotel room at night. It ended up making her scheduling go a little slower as she had to look up that info on the TAMU computers during her actual scheduling session on our last day.
At the students dinner on Day One of NSC, she was in groups with other Binn-TEAM students. I didn’t get any info on what they did or talked about other than “there were games”. She didn’t seem to meet anyone of interest, but she is a pretty quiet person and doesn’t really like big groups. There was no way for the Blinn-TEAM parents to meet as the parent dinner was all together. I ended up at a table of parents with Engineering boys.
The Yell practice after the dinner on Night One is a lot of fun and if you are not familiar with the Aggie Spirit, you will learn a lot.
The only Blinn-TEAM specific info was on the morning of Day Two of NSC, as they have break out groups depending on the college/major and Blinn-TEAM is considered a separate college, no matter what your major will eventually be at TAMU. At the break out session, the advisors go over a lot of info very quickly for a couple of hours and then you are further separated into intended majors, what you plan to major in when you finally get to be a full admit student at TAMU. The second group of advisors also went over the info very fast. There was not a general “answer/question” period, when the 2 advisors finished, several students and parents grouped around them asking very detailed questions. My daughter got tired of waiting and left without asking her question regarding Dual Credit for English. I wish that she had stayed and gotten her question answered.
If you know what major that you want to pursue, make sure that you take a copy of the TAMU core courses and your chosen degree plan with you AND make sure that if you have any Dual Credit classes that those transcripts are turned into TAMU before your NSC. And if you have AP classes, make sure that you know your scores and if you plan to use the AP credit or not. You have to accept the Dual Credit classes, you do not have to accept AP class credit. This way you will be able to see what classes you should take while you are trying to make your schedule fit your specific needs. My daughter completed a Dual Credit English class but the Community College transcript wasn’t sent ahead of time. Then we got conflicting info at TAMU about which DC English classes count for classes at TAMU. I think that she ended up registering for an English class that she will have to change, which probably isn’t a big deal but could be inconvenient as she really liked her first schedule.
They do cover some info about how to schedule, as in having classes at Blinn on certain days and TAMU on the other days, or splitting your classes at one campus early in the morning and after a couple hours break to drive/ride bus to other campus, then taking classes at the other campus in the afternoon/evening.
One thing that you can do ahead of time is look at the courses that you think you want to take, check out the syllabus and see who the professors are for each section offered, then check out the rate my prof pages. At TAMU there is a page that I think is part of the registrar’s page which lists each professor and how many people dropped their course and how many As Bs Cs etc were earned. I don’t know what that website is but if you can’t find it, call the registrars office.
Don’t swamp yourself in your first Semester. Take what you need to take but don’t take more than 15 hours if possible. Spread out the types of courses, don’t take all Math/Science/Engineering or all heavy writing courses like all English/History/Communications, etc and make sure that you take your best class at TAMU and a 1 or 2 hour fun class at TAMU just in case you get into trouble in that other class and need to drop it to save your gpa so you can stay in Blinn-TEAM.
TAMU requires a placement exam for all foreign languages. If you are in a major which requires a foreign language that you think you can place out of, take the language placement test on the PRE NSC day, in other words, on the day before your first scheduled NSC day. You have to sign up and pay for this test in advance. Blinn does not require a foreign language placement exam so you can start over again with any language at Blinn. If you are not sure that you want to take a language class during your first Semester or if you are not sure you will be able to place out of all of the hours, you can also take the foreign language placement later in the semester, or in any Semester, just as long as you do it before you sign up for language classes.
The last part of NSC was the actual scheduling. Students go to the Computing Center without their parents. There are people there who can answer questions and help you. My daughter was very happy with her initial schedule as she has classes at TAMU on MWF and at Blinn on T/Th. Hopefully the DC issue will be resolved without dramatically changing her schedule.
One bit of info that I was really interested in hearing about was that there will be 1,046 Blinn-TEAM students for Fall 2017. I had previously heard that there were over 42,000 Freshman applications for Fall 2017, with about 27,000 of those applications were under review and about 2,400 of those reviewed applicants were offered Blinn-TEAM. Various numbers of other applicants were offered Gateway/Blinn Engineering/Galveston Engineering/PSA at Corpus, etc. and about 10,000 applications were denied. And many wonderful students from her very competitive HS were offered PSA or denied admission to TAMU this year. That kind of put it all in perspective and my D is now very grateful to have been offered Blinn-TEAM. She is actually one of only a few students of her group to be going to her first choice school.
So if 2,400 were offered Blinn-TEAM but only 1,046 accepted, then less than half of the applicants who were offered Blinn-TEAM accepted that offer. And as one of the Blinn-TEAM advisors mentioned, they have to take the automatic admits, but they truly WANT the students that they offer Blinn-TEAM. They think that those students will thrive at TAMU. There just isn’t enough space for everyone who wants to attend TAMU to be a full Freshman on the TAMU campus.To be offered Blinn-TEAM, you have risen to the top of many thousands of applications. Many students will be able to transition to full TAMU after one year and almost everyone is a full admit after 2 years. You can do everything that any other Aggie can do, except play UIL sports. Sounds like a good deal to me!
Gig 'em and God Bless!
@AggieMomAgain This info is so helpful. My daughter is an A student but doesn’t do well on standardized tests and she isn’t in the top 10%. Has her heart set on TAMU and I think she would do well there so we would be pleased with a Blinn team offer. She applied the day applications opened. Do you know when they announce Blinn Team offers?
@hopefulaggiemom Blinn Team offers will come next year, usually in February.
@hopefulaggiemom The waiting for admission decisions was brutal! I think my son handled it way better than I did. Looking back i put myself under too much stress waiting for the admissions decisions to come out. Totally agree with @aggiemomagain summary of NSC, my Blinn Team Student had a very similar experience!