<p>We are still waiting for UA to acknowledge Mom2k’s role in helping to expose so many to Bama.</p>
<p>pssst, m2k, I am al about trade assets ;)<br>
If UA will go for that route…</p>
<p>I’m a single parent, and I found this site while I was (frankly) overwhelmed by how complicated and time-senstive college entrance had become. CC really helped with clear, concise, unfiltered, and funny answers to my questions.</p>
<p>I started posting here because I was encouraged to see clueless and occasionally inarticulate noobs like me are not crushed by the community. </p>
<p>We really all want the same thing: we want these young adults to have a full body-mind-spirit college experience, and at the end be happy, healthy, and ready for whatever happens next.</p>
<p>Love your response, Poet. I was in the same clueless boat until I stumbled upon this forum. I really feel like I’m “in the know” now and if I’m uncertain, I know that my answer is a search or a post away. This forum is Southern Hospitality at its best. I’m truly proud to be a part of this and I’m thrilled that DD has made so many friends as a results of my contacts here. All y’all (northerners take note of the plural form of y’all) are the best.</p>
<p>Will echo Bill, lost and floundering around. So over whelmed it was not even funny. Stumbled upon the CC forum. Saw the main page, kids getting ripped apart, told how worthless they were, scum of the earth if you can not get into the PHY’s of the world, etc. RAN! Then saw the UA forum. Helpful, useful, full of great info, encouraging, thoughtful, etc. It was home! Just like how D felt it was right at home on her first visit, when I fell into the arms of the UA CC forum I knew I was at home. I tend to not venture far from “home” now. </p>
<p>I’ve recommended CC to D’s friends to look up for the schools they were interested in or will be attending. Some are somewhat active. Some look as if they died an agonizing death. Some are just flat out rude. Others are not even active. Very little useful information to be found on so many. Which to me is very sad. Why? I do not know the answer to that but I do know, I LOVE my UA CC family!</p>
<p>^^^^Momoftriplets, duly noted</p>
<p>@NYMom3Kids: Contact your local recruiter. We did before we went on our visit back in June and she set up visits with the department my daughter is interested in, there was a dorm tour, and we took the tour with the Capstone tour guide. They are so thoughtful that they even (the tour guide which they refer to as a Capstone Man/Woman) will even call a few weeks later to see if your child has any additional questions. It was a great visit. You’re going to love it.</p>
<p>BTW, I wouldn’t have known to contact the local recruiter but someone on here posted a link to her name and that’s how it happened. This is a great forum. :)</p>
<p>FWIW, some recruiters are better than others. I e-mailed our area recruiter about 5 weeks before D’s visit. She finally responded after D and H were already in Tuscaloosa. Fortunately the folks at the Honors College had set up an itinerary for D in the meantime. With any luck the recruiter for your area will be great, but if not, definitely pursue an Honors College visit.</p>
<p>Atlanta68 said:
UA’s recruitment staff is well aware of Mom2ck’s outstanding work in this forum!</p>
<p>Thanks for the help y’all! 
yes, it looks like she is Honors eligible. Will have to search the threads for more insight about the program. A little worried that it may be more pressure for her. </p>
<p>Is it frowned upon if a parent contacts the recruiter? DD is away for a few more weeks with little computer access (yay!) but I’d like to reach out and make our visit productive. Contacted Bama Hillel but they haven’t called back yet. </p>
<p>Did any of your kids do a sleepover as a rising senior before applying?</p>
<p>^ contact Greg Wagner, the LI area recruiter. Tell him I sent you. He’s happy to speak to parents. DS can tell you all about Hillel.</p>
<p>I think the recruiters expect parents to contact them. Ours in the dfw area is very helpful! I have contacted her several times. I agree with previous poster who said to contact the recruiter and/ or the honors college to set up a personalized tour.</p>
<p>NYMom – my son was also very undecided about a major when we went for his campus visit last week, plus he was unsure if he really wanted to follow in his older sister’s footsteps (she’s a rising junior at Alabama). We set our visit up through the Honors College and I wasn’t sure how they were going to handle a kid whose possibilities ranged from education to history/political science to physics to computer science. But they did! We met with a person from each interest area (history/poly scie/international affairs got combined by meeting with an Arts and Sciences advisor who could give a broad overview – there’s only so much time in a day!). The faculty and staff really helped him to understand the pros and cons of each of his choices, and some innovative ways he could combine interests. He walked away with a plan of majoring in computer science, but got to sit in on a middle school camp presentation where each kid presented the work they’d done during the week (so he can combine his interest in comp. science with his interest in working with students). Plus they helped him to see that there is plenty of room in a comp. sci degree to take a good number of history classes just because he finds them really interesting. He feels so much better with a plan of action and getting to meet personally with so many encouraging people helped him to see that his experience at Alabama can be quite different from his sister’s. So don’t be intimidated by the Honors College because it is amazing!</p>
<p>NYMom3Kids - along with Chardo’s son who can give you info, you might want to message Dad2ILD, whose D is on the exec board of the Hillel.</p>
<p>Whitlo-your situation with your S is exactly the same as my D2! She has no idea what she wants to do, although she knows it will not be anywhere near STEM and has even taken a couple of UA Early college classes online to learn more about Anthropology and Psychology and she loves History. Has taken every AP history course offered. She is also hesitant to follow in her rising junior sister’s footsteps, but knows that UA could be a great opportunity for her. I plan to schedule an honors visit early this fall, but was worried since I had no idea what to tell them about her intended major. I really want her to feel the Love and WANT to go to UA! I am so relieved that your son felt it as an undecided student.</p>
<p>*do you have a link to the avoiding red tape pitfalls? We are planning to look at Bama near the end of August. I told my daughter to keep an open mind as the school seems to have most things she’s looking for in a university, but she’s concerned about its low key presence in our area. I told her that when I applied to my school, it wasn’t a big name tossed around where we lived but now it is one of the hottest schools. Hoping she listens and that UA wows her like I think it will.
*</p>
<p>What kind of red tape? School related? travel related? Will you be traveling as a family or just parent and child?</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Any tips on how to make the most of our visit? We are booked for the tour and the info session. She is eligible for a merit award but I don’t know about Honors. She is undecided about major but I’d like her to get more of a feel for the school and its program’s than the generic tour stuff.*</p>
<p>I still would contact honors…Allison and Susan. They will set up an amazing day. Your D wouldn’t be obligated to join honors, but the add’l info and school exposure would make your visit more informative. </p>
<p>If your D qualifies for honors, then she’d get priority registration (a big deal!!), and most of the honors classes offered fulfill a Core/GE req’t, so no “extra” classes need to be taken. </p>
<p>Will your D come in with any AP classes? </p>
<p>Since your D will be undeclared, and may not want to meet with profs of any particular major, just meeting with some honors faculty may prove interesting.</p>
<p>Tip: since you’ll be visiting in August when it will still be HOT, wear cotton only looser fitting clothing. Avoid spandex like the plague…including cotton shirts that have some spandex to make them skin-fitting. IF you’ve been to DisneyWorld in the summer, think that weather.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Don’t worry about more pressure from being in Honors. It’s not a pressure-filled experience. As M2CK pointed out, many of the honors seminars fulfill gen ed or writing requirements. The honors seminars are small, discussion based classes and they’re not intended to be overly hard or burdensome. To graduate with honors, you need to take 6 credits of honors seminars and an additional 12 credits of other honors classes. The 12 credits can be departmental honors classes, honors seminars or a combination. IHP courses, CBH courses and graduate courses can count toward the honors requirement, and there is also the possibility of doing some “honors by contract” courses, where you make arrangements with a professor to take a standard class as an honors class. There are some kids who have trouble getting all the honors hours in, but those tend to be kids who come in with a lot of AP credits, don’t need many Gen Eds and bypass lower-level departmental courses that have honors sections. </p>
<p>The benefits of honors include priority registration (this is HUGE), ability to participate in OA and AA and ability to live in honors housing, among others. I would recommend that your student apply to the Honors College. If it turns out that she is ultimately unable to fulfill the honors requirements for some reason, she will still have gotten some of the benefits of the program. I don’t see a down side.</p>
<p>There’s no problem with a parent contacting the recruiter. My D did an honors college visit, but did not do a sleepover (I don’t personally know anyone who did). Then again, she visited in January of her junior year, and even colleges that promote sleepovers don’t usually do it for juniors.</p>
<p>Echo the Honors requirements are not pressure. It opens up more course options!</p>
<p>In total, Honors needs 18 credits which are broken into 6 UH only courses/12 electives. Without trying, my son has 8.5 credits out of the 18 in his first semester. He likely will complete at least 15 by the end of freshmen year.</p>
<p>to elaborate Beth’s Mom’s lingo:</p>
<p>OA = Outdoor Action
AA = Alabama Action</p>
<p>Both are 1 week programs which equal 1 Honors elective credit. The program begins prior to the fall semester. It allows the kids to 1. Move in Early. 2. Get to know other Honors Kids 3. Community Service (either outdoors or thru local elementary schools). Ideal for my out of state kid who is going from a high school graduating class of 22 to a school with over 30,000. As a parent, I believe it will provide a smooth transition to what otherwise would be an overwhelming adjustment.</p>
<p>Meet with Allison and Dr. Sharpe if possible. After that, you will wish you were the student. We visited some top 10 colleges; none of those visits went as well as our visits with the Honors College at Bama.</p>