<p>In light of it being orientation week for a lot of colleges around this time of year, which colleges do you think have the best student orientations? From the speeches, to the activities, to anything else, which is the overall best?</p>
<p>Hendrix has a great orientation week - tests, information sessions, meeting with peer mentor and with adviser, activities, “pizza wars”, trips to bond small groups of students, and a dance competition that’s in it’s 50th year.</p>
<p>My son started last year, but I think RPI did a great job. They had overnight trips (my son did white-water rafting) and a whole week of freshman activities, and this is after the orientation where they signed up for their classes.</p>
<p>I certainly can’t say which school had the best orientation (nor can anyone else), but WUSTL was phenomenal, from the seamless move in to the convocation and open houses with faculty members from various departments, etc.</p>
<p>One of my favorite moments of Earlham College’s NSO is shown in this video, the greeting which new students get as they drive onto campus, complete with a bullhorn announcement (“Attention Earlham! Sarah has finally arrived!”) (0:48 in the video). </p>
<p>[New</a> Student Orientation 2012 - YouTube](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube)</p>
<p>You can see another thing that I loved, the new students’ names being chalked onto the sidewalk (0:11). </p>
<p>Another is the traditional speech given at convocation by the Dean of Admissions (a snippet at 3:03), in which she tells the incoming class all about itself in great detail – where the members come from, where they’ve traveled, most common names and birthdays, gap year pursuits, talents, and essay topics. It’s interesting and at times, pretty funny (“Together you scored 285,760 points on the SAT.”)</p>
<p>I thought Roger Williams did a great job preparing parents. The counseling office, in particular, sponsored a great presentation where 6 students re-enacted 6 phone calls of their actual experiences. After each one, parents briefly discussed their reaction and what they might do if they got that call from their kid, and then the kid described how they handled their crisis.</p>
<p>The first kid actually brought me to tears when she called home homesick and heartsick at not finding any real friends. And a parent recounted a great story about she had gotten that phone call from her eldest (this was her 2nd child’s orientation). She suggested they talk more the following morning, then the kid didn’t call for a few days. She worried herself sick only to find out (when Mom finally called kid) that someone had dropped by the room right after the kid hung up to invite her to a gathering, and she’d had the “best time”.</p>
<p>And sadly, I got to experience something similar to one of the “nightmare” phone calls. The girl came back to her room to find a strange male in her bed. 2 years later, one of my D’s suite-mates was incredibly self-destructive. When she started meeting guys on the internet in the morning, and bringing them back to the dorm apartment overnight, my daughter camped out in a friend’s room. She ended up going to Public Safety where they put her up in “emergency housing” until she & they could arrange for safer and more mutually compatible roommates.</p>
<p>I know D & I both left Orientation feeling that we were well aware of the various resources available on campus for whatever might arise.</p>
<p>I was seriously underwhelmed by Orientation given by the University of Hartford in comparison.</p>
<p>I loved my college’s (Spelman College) NSO, as it was a mixture of prep for the school year and the passing on of treasured traditions. We did have to listen to speeches, as well as talks on registration, success in classes, the writing portfolio requirement, community service, and that kind of stuff; take placement tests; and register for classes. But there were also a lot of traditional events - like an all-class African dance with an African dance troupe; a “Parents’ Send-Off” where we held hands with our parents and promised to be good and study and carry on their values (TEARS ALL AROUND!! it was also a great, emotional yet subtle way for the college to tell parents it was time to go home, lol); a pep rally pitting students from different regions against each other to cheer for their region (and then bringing us all together at the end to write a class song); freshman dorm wars (with T-shirts and hand signs and strolls!); a secret/surprise traditional event that was simply and utterly amazing and still one of my most vivid memories from college; and finally, an induction into the Spelman College family, where we all wore a traditional outfit and listened to artistic and oratory endeavors from our sisters and were “inducted” as Spelman sisters. The special thing about the induction is that it mirrors an event that happens at the end of our college career at Spelman, so it’s like you come full circle by the end.</p>
<p>I went through orientation 9 years ago and they are STILL doing it the same way as when I was there. And I can talk to Spelman alumna who graduated 10, 20, 30 years ago and they did the SAME things at their orientation that we did at ours, with minor tweaks. I anticipate that I’ll talk to future alumna and we’ll still share the memories!</p>
<p>My daughter and I attended the Northern Arizona University student orientation in June and though the did a great job overall, one thing in particular blew me (and most parents) away. They had the 40 student leaders that were assisting the orientation put on skits of real-life topics that the students would deal with as college students. They hit on every single topic you could think of: sex, STD, drinking, pregnancy, rape, abuse, cheating, drugs, overdose, suicide, cutting, depression, etc… Then they took the kids into small groups of 10 and talked about what they just experienced. My daughter told me that a few girls in her group cried because it touched them in some way (it happened to them, it happened to a friend, etc…). It was very powerful and an eye opener for many kids and parents.</p>
<p>Though the topics were very hard hitting and extremely real, it was wonderfully done and the parents were amazed. They should take their show on the road and perform to the high schools.</p>
<p>harvard begins today! any experiences?</p>
<p>
No one can answer that since obviously no one’s attended them all and the vast majority of posters have only been to a very small handful, maybe 1 to 3, so any feedback you get would be purely anecdotal about their very limited experiences and irrelevant to answering your question of ‘best’.</p>
<p>scratch best and how about notable?</p>
<p>The orientation needs depend on the school. Summer orientation/advising/registration at public flagships can be excellent. Parent program at UW likely saves students a lot of questions from their parents. Able to plan for final dorm purchases. All of this without bugging kid during the first days at school in the fall. This works best when most of the student population lives within driving distance (foreign student orientation is just before classes start) while most private schools do not make their students/parents make an additional trip.</p>
<p>As a UW alum I found the orientation good. Parents had a lot of information and chance to see the campus. Students were mostly given a separate experience with parents not allowed to interfere. Nice to be able to do the dorm move in as a separate experience, with so many questions already answered. There were “Welcome Week” new student library orientations and other activities for students. </p>
<p>I for one could forgo the blah-blah-blah speeches about how great it is for you parents to have your S/D attending our institution styles. The business office and other lectures/discussions were much more helpful. At UW there is some kind of convocation- not sure if most attend or not. Hearing the administration is not exactly relevant to day to day college life.</p>
<p>I have twins who are freshmen, so I might have a bit of a unique perspective. Both schools had excellent orientation programs, although they were quite different.</p>
<p>DD attends Duke. After allowing plenty of time for an impressively organized move-in (upperclass volunteers do all the lifting), they immediately send students to one part of campus and parents to the other end. We had a couple meals together over a day and a half, but otherwise had separate programs, each with vital, well-presented information.</p>
<p>DS attends Notre Dame. Upperclassmen also do all the work here, but they try much harder to let families know that their child is joining a supporting community. This orientation lasted two and a half days and parents spent a good deal of time with their student. Parents were excused around 8 each evening, but students kept going until after midnight.</p>
<p>We left both programs feeling informed and confident that our children were in positive, encouraging environments.</p>
<p>I agree with GladGradDad - tough for anyone to really say because nearly everyone only attends one. That said, as a parent, the one our S got at Miami was really something special.</p>
<p>I took the OP to mean not “which college has literally the best NSO” but rather “tell us about an interesting/informative/fun/creative/otherwise good NSO experience you’ve had.”</p>