<p>What is happening during orientation?
Are the students meeting face to face with their advisers?
Will students be taking placement tests?
It may be good to attend if your child is looking for someone to talk to regarding AP credit/course placement, dual enrollment credits, getting department approvals, etc.
Is there a possibility that your child may need to meet with res life regarding a room/dorm pick?
Does your child have work study as part of their financial aid package (may be an opportunity to ask or get first dibs on work study positions / on or off campus job opportunities</p>
<p>It is also a great opportunity to do a dry run, to travel on his/her own (unless, you will be fling back and forth to campus to take him/her back and forth to school), get a feel for the lay of the land on his own, perhaps meet up with roommate (s), </p>
<p>We were living in Germany the summer before my daughter went to college. There was an orientation right before school started (in addition to many throughout the summer), mostly for international students but really for anyone who needed it. Supposedly they leave some slots open in the classes for all the orientation sessions.</p>
<p>“instead of just doing an orientation the normal way - a new student week prior to classes beginning? What is the possible advantage of this?”</p>
<p>The reason schools have summer orientation sessions is space and resources. It’s really only big schools that do it this way. Orienting 6000 freshmen at once is impractical. You wouldn’t be able to give any of them much personal guidance. All the orientation sessions would have to be in the basketball arena. Breaking it up into sessions allows a school to hire a smaller number of the best orientation counselors and have them each work with several small groups over time.</p>
<p>^^^^
Ds school had 4,000 freshmen & had several orientations.
Two in summer, one right before classes. As she was taking her gap year & was out of the country, she had to attend the last one.
It did make a difference. I don’t think she had as many opportunities for course selection and the earlier sessions seemed to have additional events to meet other students & faculty.
However, she eventually caught up.</p>