<p>*also how many his scholarship covers, that should really be cleared up for future</p>
<p>*
Which scholarship does he have? Presidential and NMF cover up to 20 credits per semester. This policy was implemented a few years ago. It’s not widely publicized, so many may not know about it.</p>
<p>Upstate, keep checking on those honors econ classes. There may be some movement throughout the summer. IMO, kids work on their schedules at night, so that’s a good time to check, also early morning to see what’s happened in the middle of the night.</p>
<p>My S had a very successful Bama Bound, including registration - he was done in 5 minutes with all the classes he wanted. I’m sorry some of your kids seemed to have registration issues, that’s a bummer. </p>
<p>Registration tips:
S says the best thing he did for registration was to have all of the CRN numbers written down, so that he could just type them all in at once, rather than doing registration one class at a time in “look up classes”. He highly recommends this.
At least for Engineering, the kids were told that they could bring their own laptop/ipad for registration if they wanted to. We thought that sounded great and S took my laptop, but unfortunately he had trouble connecting to the campus wifi. He said it was fine though, there were enough computers so it didn’t matter. If your child does want to bring their own I would suggest trying to connect before registration starts in case there is a problem.
I was surprised that there was no time that the kids were supposed to meet with the advisors, even for a few minutes, like several of you had described. However, after the school visit session on Day 1, the advisors stayed and answered questions for anyone who chose to stay, so that was nice. We actually had a really good experience with an advisor - my S is one of those non-cookie-cutter, lots of AP credit kids with an unusual schedule for a freshman. After he explained his questions to her, she acknowledged that she was not the right one answer the questions, and she personally walked us to Dr. Cordes’ (head of CS) office. I’m sure the student after us probably didn’t appreciate that though LOL.
Meeting with Dr. Cordes was extremely helpful. I would definitely recommend trying to meet with a professor or department head at some point if you have unusual schedule needs. He made my S feel so much better about his choices and confirmed our thoughts about what to skip and/or take again as far as AP credits.
Engineering specific - If anyone has a kid coming in with credit for both Calc I and Calc II and they do not intend to retake them, they are NOT required to take ENGR 103. This was news to us and unexpectedly freed up S to take an extra class. Fortunately the one he decided on fit in perfectly with the schedule he was already working with.</p>
<p>Bama Bound tips:
For the most part everything is very well organized. It is more sitting and listening to speakers than I was expecting, which got a little long at times. It was also more crowded than I expected and there were lots of lines for food, etc. The restaurants in town were crowded also, at least at dinnertime.
Breakfast is not included or even addressed for Day 1 - you are completely on your own with no suggestions, so plan for that. Starbucks in the Ferg was open and very crowded. Subway and maybe one other option in the food court were also open. The Alabama Credit Union had granola bars. I had the included breakfast at my hotel before I went over, but my S ended up unprepared because he spent the money he had with him on joining a club, so he had no money to get any breakfast. I got there in time to get him breakfast but just be aware. I might even just send the kid with pop tarts or protein bars or something so they don’t have to deal with it at all.
IMPORTANT TIP for Day 1 - lunch is included - parents get a preloaded card, and kids have money loaded on their ACT card. However, they don’t go get their ACT cards until the beginning of the lunch session, and of course then there was a gigantic line. My S was lucky that his session right before lunch ended a couple minutes early and he went straight to the SUPE store and got in line. By the time his roommates got down there the line was ridiculous so they decided to eat lunch first. Which was fine, except it meant they had to pay for lunch, since they didn’t have their ACT cards yet. Just something to be aware of. I would tell your student to BOLT for the SUPE store as soon as they can at the beginning of lunch.
If you are bringing your own linens for the dorm don’t forget towels.
Don’t forget a bathing suit and towel for the rec center on night 1 - S had the best time playing Battleship in the pool.</p>
<p>That’s all I can think of right now, but I’m sure there will be more that comes to me. :)</p>
<p>No offense to lisa6191 (great post!), but WHOA and hold the phone. ^ about how if you are electing to ‘skip’ Calc I and II and go directly (presumably) into Calc III you DON’T have to take Engr 103?! </p>
<p>I’d like to see that in writing somewhere on the website, the catalog, or on some piece of paper. Because they combined 131, 141, 151 into 103, maybe DW doesn’t reflect things accurately at the moment. I really would hate for kids to skip registering for Engr 103 based on this post if this is not confirmed further with UA. I just would like this somewhere in writing before proceeding, if it were my kid at BB.</p>
<p>“Which scholarship does he have? Presidential and NMF cover up to 20 credits per semester. This policy was implemented a few years ago. It’s not widely publicized, so many may not know about it.”</p>
<p>Thanks m2k, actually in degreeworks when I look at his schedule it says the max is 18, not sure if that is the scholarship or business school rule, but I am going to assume at least for now that is correct.</p>
<p>Surprisingly also, when I went in today there are seats open in an honors section now, so I am going to encourage him (not me this time!), to go in and play with moving a couple things around. I thought we weren’t allowed back in until 10:00 tomorrow when the next bama bound session starts registering, that is what they were told.</p>
<p>Agreed, my daugher was completely prepared with courses/times and backup courses, but the honors courses were impossible to get. She ended up with 1 one credit hour UH120 course. Couldn’t get any of the 155 or Honors Econ or Honors Psyc. If it’s always like this, I don’t see how a student will possibly get all of the honors credits needed to graduate with honors :(</p>
<p>^^I was just going to recommend that those who didn’t get their first choice courses/sections keep checking in to see if something opens up. In the engineering session, they said registration opens up every BB session and every SATURDAY, so you have more opportunities to tweak your schedule if you are willing to keep checking in to the system over the summer.</p>
<p>DD had a very successful registration, ending up with her perfect schedule (after entering her 2nd choices and then waiting a few minutes to see if the dream classes/sections opened up, which they did). Dr. Singleton reviewed DD’s registration and even complimented her for “doing her homework.” All in all, DD came away from the experience confident that she will be able to do most of the planning on her own for next semester. </p>
<p>Oh, and hello to FaithHopeLove! DD and I enjoyed meeting you and your dad. It was good to be able to compare notes on BB experiences!</p>
<p>Kim614 - keep trying on the UH 155 classes. They’ll open up additional seats during future BB sessions. Be sure to go in first thing when the future BB registrations open and you may be able to find a spot. It’s not a bad idea to save some of those honors credits for the 300 level seminars that satisfy Gen Ed requirements, too. Your student may not get into the most popular of those until he or she is a junior or senior, but at that point they’ll probably be happy to have an interesting honors class to balance out the load.</p>
<p>She’s actually really happy with the way her class times are set up now, so getting her to agree to change it to knock out an honors class may not be so easy But, we will go on and check to see what’s available every now and then. Thanks!</p>
<p>To all of y’all worrying about registration being like this in future semesters - it gets better. As far as advising issues go, there are quite simply too few advisors for in-depth one-on-one discussions with every student at Bama Bound. In the future, setting up advising appointments a month or two before registration starts might be a good idea. I myself am still figuring out how to best utilize my advisor. And the Honors requirement is not too hard to fulfill between UH seminars, departmental honors, and honors by contract. One three-hour class per semester for six semesters will get you there. Don’t fret! </p>
<p>Congrats to those who got the schedules they wanted, and to those who didn’t - keep trying! I actually came out of Bama Bound satisfied with my schedule, but ended up changing it around over the summer. No life-altering decisions were made. ;)</p>
<p>My tip is do not be a helicopter parent. We saw a few parents actually making the schedules for their kids and then telling then what to sign up for…let your student work this out on their own as you will not be allowed into the registration sessions. Sit with them and advise, but let them do the work and make the decisions.</p>
<p>with many of the kids still finishing up senior year in HS…I can understand getting a little parental assistance. :-)</p>
<p>I think perhaps a lesson-learned opportunity for the Honors BAMA Bound would be that additional timeanand in-depth advisory support should be available. By definition, these kids are high-stats and that brings concomitant “special circumstances.” This should be a “good thing” and not a source of angst
for the kids who dual major, US or whatever the unique situation.</p>
<p>Aeromom - I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but it is in writing on the sheet they distributed at the engineering school session on day 1. I didn’t believe it either and had S confirm with Dr. Cordes. I’m not sure why its not required, doesn’t really make sense to me, honestly. I am happy to scan the sheet if anyone is interested, but by all means reconfirm before registering. I just brought it up so that if it applies to someone they can think about other class possibilities rather than scrambling at the last minute.</p>
<p>Question about registration… Assuming all prerequisites are already completed on degree works, do advisers have to sign off on the chosen classes or is the registration hold automatically lifted just from being at BB? In other words, is specific individual “approval” needed by the student before he is allowed to register? </p>
<p>I love the idea of talking with advisers after the department meeting on Day 1; that way there is time to think things through before actually registering.</p>
<p>Thanks to all who posted their experiences from BB1!!</p>
<p>My son said he handed his class pick sheet to an “advisor” who looked at it and said ok but he needed to add a CS course. Son had to explain that he was exempt from CS because his 8 credits of dual enrollment foreign language credits covered that. Total time with advisor 35 seconds. That caught us by surprise, we figured someone was going to counsel him while having his degreeworks in front of them. All worked well since son put all of his requested classes into the add section and all came back accepted including 3 Honors classes. Son said he was one of the first to register from his business group so thats probably why all worked out so well. Start to finish he said he was done in 2 minutes registering. He said it was a very easy process.</p>
<p>Also, as far as I can tell, once the student’s hold has been lifted at BB, they can go in any time and change things around. There are not set times the system is available or not. The reason to go on at 9 am on day 2 of subsequent BB’s is that that is when additional seats are released for freshman classes like UH 155. The idea is to snag the spots before they are filled up again, but that’s not the only time registration is open. My S already changed a class and it went through no problem. He had also forgotten to register for his STEM MBA class so he took care of that also.</p>
