Is anyone else as frustrated with this system as we are??! My son’s advisor/counselor refuses to speak with him via phone and only wants to communicate by email. His “enrollment” started this am and by 0800 all the courses he wanted are full. Courses that are required for his field. Emails to his counselor have been less than productive and absolutely off the mark on several things.
He is beginning to regret his decision to attend CU at this point.
Anyone else having issues? Any advice? Aerospace engineering, if that helps.
Sorry to hear that happened. I do not like this “elective” orientation, and if we had to do it again we would go there in person.
That being said, my D had a much better experience. She had a phone meeting set up with the counselor that was indicated on her portal. The counselor had a Google Doc or something like that where she signed up for a 30 minute phone discussion, and received a ton of great information. My D even followed up with a couple of emails, which were returned promptly. She received some great advice about putting her classes in a shopping cart, and then once the registration time hit, she just moved from the shopping cart to her schedule and lucked out and got all of her classes. We know she was very lucky. She was on her portal the second it opened, and it was slow - so I know there was a lot of internet traffic. Clearly we had a more on-top-of-it counselor than you did.
My older daughter goes to a different school that has in-person orientation, and she didn’t get everything she wanted. So I don’t necessarily think it was the orientation, but the particular counselor your son received. So sorry. But he can still fulfill his core classes as well now. And another thing I learned from D1’s college - courses open up all the time. Have him keep looking constantly, because people drop and add throughout the period. They will release more space for the next two sessions, and then open classes again for the whole school, so keep looking. She was able to add classes every single term that she wanted - she just needed to wait for others to drop out and they always did.
The last feature my D learned about for Boulder is a “swapping” feature. You don’t have to drop a class and then try to pick up another one, because that could backfire. But he can try to swap classes in the portal without losing his original space.
Good luck.
Also - you might be able to call and request another counselor. Just call the department itself. My D had to do this because her original counselor went on a long vacation and she needed some other questions answered, so just called the department and a second person advised her as well.
My daughter seemed to have lucked out too. (Mech. Eng). We did not go to orientation (we live on the East Coast). I don’t believe that she ever spoke directly to her counselor but they did email back and forth a great deal. Her counselor enrolled her in 3 of her 4 classes (comp sci, physics and calc) so all she had to do was select her humanities class. She too put it in a shopping cart and just had to hit a button on Monday morning. She was also able to change the time of her calc class by doing a swap. I would tell you to have your son put his name on the waiting list for his classes and check frequently - people are adding and dropping all the time.
Thanks for the replies. He did have his shopping cart ready to go and was online at opening but because one of his classes was “full”, it didn’t enroll him in any! I am really peeved that the counselor refuses to have phone conversations because I believe a lot of this could have been avoided by having her explain things to him a little better.
I will make sure he does the wait list, although his counselor told him he cannot do that until he is on campus??? I will also make sure he is aware of the “swap” feature.
I’m still debating asking for a new counselor. I don’t want to make anyone angry when we are already behind. So frustrating!!
3mamagirls- I don’t think going there in person would have helped much as you cannot enroll when you are there. It is just another tour basically. Not an orientation.
Sounds like you both have pretty good counselors.
So sorry your son is having such a hard time @3Rooneys !! My D was also very fortunate (Chemical Eng.)… Met with her academic advisor when we toured in March and she has been in constant contact through email. Her advisor also enrolled her in her required courses and she just had to pick her electives and she also “swapped” from Calc 1 to Calc 2. The advisor has been great to responding back almost immediately with D’s constant questions on the whole scheduling thing.
@3Rooneys Please have your son call the department head and ask for your son to be let into a reasonable course schedule. I have been an instructor for Chemical Engineering and I always let students into my classes after the fact. I am not as sure for huge freshman classes but I think he may be able to talk his way in with some steady phone calls to the right people over there. . The squeeky wheel concept works well for CU engineering. its a great school, do not despair, it has some beaurocratic issues with registration as all large schools have. For sure get him to request a different counselor. Most younger people do not use phones, though, I have found. Counselors are very young people. Department heads are old people, they use phones, but may or may not respond, depending on their mood,
etc.
@3Rooneys Penina Axelrad is the department head of Aero Astro.