<p>I was impressed with University of Minnesota Twin Cities parent/student orientation in the summer before my S freshman year. They had several sessions with the parents and students together, and then split us up. The soon-to-be freshman were given more information, met with their counselors, picked their classes and had some social time with the other students. I was VERY IMPRESSED though with the freshman week the kids had the week before classes started. All the freshman moved in a week early and had a week of getting to know the campus and other students. They had serious group discussions, but they also had fun with a trip to the amusement park at the Mall of America, a midnight run to Target (with many,many busses and lots of freebies), a tour of Minneapolis and St. Paul, an information fair with all the clubs, groups giving out information and, best of all, spirit night where they went into the football field and were “riled up” about their team and school (they also took a picture of the entire class on the football field which they later got as a poster and is priceless.) My S who really isn’t into sports ended up as a “Gopher Greeter” at the football/basketball/hockey games because of this and had a great time cheering on UMN. They had the weekend “off” and started school the day after Labor Day comfortable with the school, knowing some other students, and prepared. I thought it was a great introduction as freshmen!</p>
<p>jnm123,</p>
<p>I do not want to sound authoritative here, because I was a UT student decades ago. Back then, I found it virtually impossible as a lower division student not in a specific honors program (I was in CS before there was an honors CS) to get real academic advising of any value (it was easy to get advising from a know-nothing undergrad student, but it had little to no value). It certainly may be different today. Also, as we become adults we learn that persistence and assertiveness often pays off and it might for any individual. But if policies and procedures have not changed much, I would guess it would be very difficult for a student not in an honors program to get any quality advising as a lower division student at UT.</p>
<p>Rice university has an amazing orientation program (called O-week) in which freshman and transfer students attend a week of activities and bonding with their residential colleges and O-week advisers the week before school starts. Students are in groups of 7-8, and matched with 2 O-week advisers who are their guides for the week, and who maintain a close mentoring relationship over the following years. The peer advisers are volunteers, and do it for the love of the school and their commitment to “paying it forward.”</p>
<p>I just want to jump in here on UT - I suspect austinareadad’s description of UT is VERY out of date. He admits he went there decades ago, and “it may be different today.” From my second-hand knowledge of UT, I think it IS very different today.</p>
<p>While I have no first-hand experience with UT, I know that competition to get in is fierce, especially for in-state students. I think in Texas the top 10% of public hs students get in and the other 90% of public hs students are free to look elsewhere, so the idea that “the admissions requirements are not as high as at LACs” is probably wrong. </p>
<p>Also, there is a poster on CC whose son is attending UT from out of state. He suffered from some severe problems this year (including physical problems and a diagnosis of a mental illness) and he has found quite a bit of support and help. </p>
<p>I’m sure Austinareadad’s account of UT is was very accurate for “decades ago.” But I don’t think it’s accurate now. For instance, standing in lines to register was very common in the past, but no one does that any more. Virtually all colleges do their registrations online now.</p>
<p>“Customs is Haverford College’s First-Year Experience program, which includes a five-day orientation immediately preceding the fall semester.”</p>
<p>This program is extensive and it actually preceeds (e.g., how students are assigned to dorm room and advisors) and extends well beyond the five day orientation. If you go to Haverford’s home page there is a tab for parents. If you follow it you can read about Customs in great detail. </p>
<p>Since my S will be starting this August, we do not have first hand experience but we have spoken with many former and current students. All of the comments about Customs were very positive. Incoming students quickly become part of the community and develop friendships.</p>
<p>My pre-freshman year experience at a large state school has already exceeded my expectations as far as individual attention. About UT-Austin, both my parents went there, and I have many friends who go there and will start this fall. My parents, and actually grandparent, have horror stories about registering and being thrown into the “deep end” with nobody to help them, but it seems to be very different today. They have a 2 1/2 day orientation where they are led in broken down groups by a student orientation leader. I have spoken with a student orientation leader I know and she told me that she gets to know every individual person in her group over the 2 1/2 days. </p>
<p>My personal experience at IU-Bloomington has also been good thus far. I was shocked to realize that I had a full hour to meet with an adviser in my major during orientation. We were also in small groups and I think I met everyone in my group (including the star basketball player). I am living in one of the living learning communities this year for my major. I don’t know if it will live up to the marketing hype, but it has been good so far. The sophomore mentors set up a Facebook group for us and we can get questions answered about pretty much anything on the group very quickly. It has been a great resource for those small questions that would take a few days to get a response if we had to email someone with the school.</p>
<p>My S came back from UT-Austin orientation a few weeks ago. What Austinareadad described about UT is absolutely NOT true. S got two advising sessions-one with orientation advisor who is an upper division student and the other with dept advisor. Honor students get a faculty member for advising. BTW they register and have access to schedule, courses, degree requirements, AP scores and anything else students need to know online now.</p>
<p>sunnydayfun,</p>
<p>I did write that I was a student decades ago and the policies and procedures could have changed, and apparently they have.</p>
<p>Lafalum84,</p>
<p>Many students at UT could not get accepted as freshmen and so they went to other state schools and to community colleges and then transferred in. So I am not so sure that the median student at UT is that much better than a few decades ago when such transfers were less common.</p>
<p>D’s school (small LAC) had a 5-day Orientation filled with seminars, games and activites, special meals, meetings, and parties. At the end, they at least knew the faces of their fellow freshmen, which I imagine is helpful once the returning students start filtering in. Freshman are also required to take a seminar where they can further get to know their fellow frosh and acclimate to college academics without the intimidating presence of upperclassmen. It sounds like most schools now have some type of system to help freshmen make connections, and that’s a great thing. </p>
<p>Having said that, it’s up to the student to take advantage of these programs, and that is hardest to do for the shy kids, who need them most. My D had a lonely, miserable freshman year in part because she isolated herself despite all of the school’s outreach programs. Sophomore year, she determined to “put herself out there.” On the very first day back, she resisted the strong impulse to hole up in her room, and took a book out to the lounge. She says it was terrifying the first time, but she buried her nose in her book and forced herself to stay. To her surprise, people said hello as they walked by and eventually someone stopped to talk. The next day, it was a little easier to take herself and her book to the big lounge in the student center, where more people talked to her. The third day, sitting in the coffee shop with her trusty book, someone stopped to have coffee with her and ended up invited her to an event that was taking place on the quad. The ice was finally broken, and she’s been fine ever since. But it took her screwing up every ounce of courage, and being willing to put herself into a situation that was, for a short while, excruciatingly uncomfortable.</p>
<p>A lot of what is described unthread seems pretty standard. Freshmen come a week early. There are activities, such as hiking trips or exploring the nearby city. Activity fairs. Some initial meeting with an adviser, and registration. Bonding experiences both at the total school level and at a smaller level (dorm, major, area of special interest such as religious groups). Who does something that’s NOT done at 50 other schools? To me, that would be most interesting.</p>
<p>Austindad- my S is starting this fall at the school where h and I both went. In “our day” our parents moved us in, kissed us goodbye, we met in our dorms and had one all campus get together and that was that, and I didn’t have “advising.” it’s all so different today everywhere that I cannot extrapolate for my son. He will have a totally different welcome and experience.</p>
<p>Englishjw-- that’s the kind of thing I’d been looking for-- something that lasts through the year in a meaningful way. Customs sounds great.</p>
<p>And LasMa-- this is what I’m afraid of for D, exactly. I love your D’s solution!!!</p>
<p>Quote:Many students at UT could not get accepted as freshmen and so they went to other state schools and to community colleges and then transferred in. </p>
<p>I have never heard any students transferred from CC to UT-Austin. UT does have a CAP program that allows students from 6 other UT system schools to transfer to UT as sophomores if they maintain a GPA of 3.0 in freshman year. According to UT common data set 2010: Percent in top tenth of high school graduating class 75.6%.With this stat. I would think UT has a very good median student.
Class size at UT-I had concerns about the class size as well because UT is a massive school. Now I found out that the large classes are usually the low division classes (for example Chem 1) and/or required electives such as English, US History, Ecom, Gov etc. which my S is placed out of. The upper division core classes are much smaller as I understood.</p>
<p>Two schools I am familiar with have great programs for entering freshmen. The first is TCU. They have all sorts of outdoor or service programs, called Frog Camp. These all occur before the first week of school. The other is Furman University. They too have everything from Whitewater River rafting to service projects. These activities run four days before move in. Then O week is four days of fun and silly events meant to get the students acclimated to the campus, the local area and one another. I like this approach because the trips are limited to 20 kids and the orientation is everyone. If students do the pre-orientation program they have the opportunity to make a few friends, right before jumping into the big kid pool.</p>
<p>Again, not to rain on parades here, but TONS of schools have these kinds of pre-first week of school programs, where you can choose from programs geared towards leadership, towards the outdoors, towards doing service projects in an undeserved urban or rural area, and so forth. I am sure that TCU and Furman do a fine job – but lots of other schools have the exact same thing – what is out there that is DIFFERENT?</p>
<p>In fact, I’m willing to bet that these programs are run by outside travel / leisure companies, not the universities themselves, and the same company that runs the wilderness or whitewater rafting experience for College A turns around and runs basically the same thing for College B, just in College B’s neck of the woods instead. That makes a heck of a lot more sense that assuming that each orientation office spontaneously does all the legwork to come up with each of these programs.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl–at least for JHU, that’s totally untrue. The PreO programs are run by student groups, either the Outdoor Program (for backpacking/climbing/canoeing) or Habitat for Humanity (community service). The trip leaders are all upperclassmen volunteers, who give up several weeks of their summers training and doing dry runs to make sure things work as much as possible. I would bet that is more typical than hiring outsiders to run the programs.</p>
<p>Actually, Habitat for Humanity is a great example of what I’m talking about – the trip leaders may be students from the school, but they don’t “invent” the mechanics of how to build a home for charity – they partner with HFH, who already knows how to run the mechanics of how to build the home. (Which is great!) I mean, the JHU kids aren’t sitting around figuring out building codes in given areas or how to wire something or safety standards or buying hard hats or whatever – they are making use of HFH’s expertise. I would think that they would do the same thing with working with a tour operator for a wilderness / canoe / kayaking type of expedition. For liability reasons alone!</p>
<p>dizzycat, the same is true for Whitman. They have a very well established Outdoor Program (OP) run by the students that facilitates trips all year, including the freshman pre-orientation trips called scrambles. My son is a student volunteer leader for a backpacking scramble in a couple of weeks. He had to take a Wilderness First Responder first aid course and they do an entire dry run the week prior to the official trip so there won’t be any glitches when they have the freshman out there. They offer kayaking, rocking climbing, whitewater rafting and backpacking scrambles, all led by students. One of the attractions Whitman held for my son was the leadership possibilities offered by the OP.</p>
<p>Whitman also has a community service week pre-orientation program, but I don’t know how that is organized.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, just crossed posts with you. The Whitman Outdoor Program has a paid employee who is coordinator for the program, but it’s entirely staffed by students and completely funded by the school, however they are not amateurs. These kids take outdoor skills classes and are ardent outdoors people.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I’m not sure what your point is. All I want to point out is that, as far as I know, these experiences are not usually run by outside groups (tour operators) who are running them for profit.</p>
<p>Like the program at Whitman, the Outdoor Program PreO (and trips during the school year) are run by students, with the exception of one staff person paid by the university. The money collected for the PreO trip goes to training the student trip leaders (they take a NOLS program, wilderness first responder and training sessions during the year) and other expenses for the program. There are no other outside groups involved. HFH is also nonprofit.</p>