I was accepted to Oberlin! I am still to make my final decision but so far Oberlin is my first choice school. I am from Zimbabwe so I was awarded the Mondlane Scholarship for African students of about 15k.
My school doesnt work out GPA but i mostly had A’s and a few B’s and C’s throughout high school.
SAT: 1340 ( 750 math, 590 Reading and writing)
SAT 2 : 750 Chem, 760 Physics
Extra-Curriculars: School Band, Community Choir, math and Science Olympiad, Debate
@SmolPidge your focus sounds like my daughter who is a current first year. She is an intended creative writing major and will start Japanese next fall but takes a Japanese history class now. She is very happy with Oberlin and the curriculum.
LMC9902, what’s your D’s interest in Japanese for, may I ask? Just curious.
@russellwittgen she has always been a Studio Ghibli fan (I likely spelled that wrong) and has spent time in Japan before and loved the culture. She is also Asian/Caucasian mix (but not Japanese) and has always gravitate toward learning more about Asia. She couldn’t make the language classes work this past fall with her schedule and was disappointed so she plans to work around Japanese this coming fall.
FWIW, if your child wants Japanese I highly recommend choosing that as one of their preselected classes. First years get to choose two that they are pretty much guaranteed. Mine chose creative writing because it was hard to get into and also chose her First Year Seminar. Both were great but it meant she was not able to get into Japanese, which we mistakenly assumed wouldn’t be popular but it was!
kibmom18 : My D is a current freshman at Oberlin. We went to the “All Roads” program last year, and it was well worth it. We had a great time…great schedule and events…lovely campus in the spring…and my D decided that she was not going anywhere else. She settled into Oberlin very smoothly. Highly recommend you attend.
Thanks @stressDad we are definitely attending!
@LMC9902 Is it only the beginner Japanese classes that are so popular at the moment? I’ve been taking classes all throughout high school, so I probably wouldn’t be starting at the 100 level. Definitely want to get creative writing down, as for the other class, I’ll have to think on it.
@SmolPidge I can’t say but it’s likely beginning classes. They offered two sections last fall and they meet daily so it’s best to choose that and have the other classes work around it. I’m thinking more advanced classes are also hard to get but you should ask. The issue I saw was that my daughter wanted fiction but didn’t mention Japanese till she arrived and she got the fiction class that conflicted with Japanese. At that point the other fiction that didn’t conflict was full with a big wait list so she couldn’t move. I would wait on choosing freshman seminar since those are at many days/times and jump on language and creative writing.
Attend closed classes and email the profs. Oberlin profs are very approachable and will accommodate students if they are able to. In one of my D’s larger lectures (I believe no more than 40 total students), my D said the prof divided her relatively small class into two and gave two lectures. This is what Oberlin profs do for their students.
@StJohnny I agree and mine did the same. My advice was mostly about being able to choose two first year classes. Language should be chosen because other classes can work around it. If you try to fit language in after the others are set it often means shifting all classes. Much easier if you don’t need to.
I’ll just quickly plug Oprestissimo, it’s great to help figure out your schedule and requirements and also you can easily see historical enrollment numbers. It looks like Fall '17 ended with 5/51 JAPN 101 spots open last fall which means either 10% of the class dropped it after enrollment was over or it didn’t fill up. It looks like there were a decent amount of random FYSP spots still open, and only 2/100 CRWR Intro spots which, again, might have been late semester withdrawals.
You said you had previous experience, so if you aren’t placing into a course on the “Courses Open to and Appropriate for New Students” list do not bother putting it on your summer list as they will not enroll you in it until you get on campus in the fall.
@megame18 I hadn’t heard of that but will tell my daughter because it would be very useful to know. As I mentioned above, the beginning Japanese class was possible to get into but it would have required trying to change CRWR and that was pretty hard to get into another section. Live and learn - it all worked out in the end. I will also say that in both of her semesters she had classes she was told were closed but she attended class and communicated her strong interest to professors and they ended up letting her in. One was a smaller seminar for creative writing and it took some convincing but it’s now her favorite class. Oberlin professors are great and really want to help students who are interested in taking their classes.
Oh yes sorry, my reply was more for prospective students who may not be familiar with all that goes into college scheduling! Just trying to show my thought process of how I would go about picking those summer courses but it definitely depends on the priorities of the student and what they really want to take. I can also second your daughters experience that professors are great about keeping waitlists and trying to get as many interested students in as possible!
Hi @megame18 what is the process for picking courses for a freshman?
It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, so if anyone notices any wrong details definitely feel free to correct me/add on, but I don’t think too much will have changed!
Sometime in the summer you’ll get a chance to list 4 courses you want to take off of a “Courses Open to and Appropriate for New Students” list. Here’s one from 16-17: http://catalog.oberlin.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=36&poid=4730 for an idea of what’s generally open. I don’t believe you get to specify professor/section, but you’ll get put into a maximum of 2 of these. Then when you get on campus for orientation in August, you’ll have a couple of advising sessions and a chance to take placement tests, if you’re interested in courses that require those. You can also use these days to contact professors about other courses you may want to take that require consent, for example higher level courses if you’re bringing in AP/dual credits.
Then, with randomized enrollment times Thursday evening and Friday morning, it becomes the standard enrollment process: online portal with all the courses/times/profs and you pick the exact sections you want, as long as they aren’t full. If they are full but one of your top choices, you immediately email the professor and ask to get on the waitlist, they’ll either tell you it’s too long or to go to the first few courses and you’ll likely be able to enroll. By the end of your enrollment time you will have to be enrolled in 4 courses. I ended up dropping all 4 courses I was enrolled in at the end of orientation. I think I actually changed my schedule during every semester’s add/drop (the first two weeks or so of classes) so there is definitely a lot of movement in enrollments and there is no need to panic if you don’t immediately get in courses you need/want!
Also reading some of the earlier posts, my one warning towards All Roads is the overnight stay in the residence halls, if you opt for that. I was on the email list for hosting and almost every weekend we would get semi urgent emails about students needing places to stay, so you basically get paired with whoever isn’t busy, instead of maybe someone you might actually have interests with. Definitely try to get there early enough on Thursday that you can attend an event or class and find a student to have lunch with! If you don’t think you’ll be comfortable asking a random student, you can always email the department chair of your prospective major and ask to arrange a meal/coffee with someone on the major’s committee or find an RA of a program hall or president of a club you want to join or something like that. If you don’t seem to be getting any bites (which would surprise me), offer to bribe them with Slow Train or the Feve and you’ll definitely be in! Still doesn’t guarantee you’ll click of course, but at least you’ll have some sort of common interest to discuss instead of the “uhh not sure about that I’m not really involved in ___” answers you might get from your randomly assigned host.
Thanks @megame18 great advice!
Hm…are you saying you have to try to find your own host, and that you don’t get paired until Thursday evening? My son signed up for an overnight…is there a chance he’d get to Thursday night and they wouldn’t have a host for him? He is a gung-ho science student, but we don’t have any connections… I don’t think he has to be paired with a science student necessarily, since he’ll be visiting science information sessions during the day, but I’ve been hoping he’d be paired with someone friendly who could tell him about the campus experience?
Hey @Launching you’ll have a prearranged host that has gone through training through the admissions office. So they will be friendly and will be able to tell your son about their campus experience.
The general process is after being trained, the hosts can go in the admissions office and see who is coming and offer to host students with matching interests. However, maybe there is a big chemistry test the Friday of your visit, then a lot of the sciencey hosts might be too busy that week and the humanities hosts will have picked students more interested in humanities. So on Tuesday/Wednesday there are a few science prospective students still without a host. The admissions department will then email all the trained hosts just something like “looking for # women-identifying hosts and # male-identifying hosts for this weekend”. They’ll then try their best to match you with one of these last minute volunteers, but no guaranteeing they will be similar to your son. So, you might get lucky and have been hand picked by a host or you may get unlucky with your timing and end up with someone who knows nothing about your interests.
@megame18 that is very helpful! Thanks for the information! I am sure it will work out - it’s good to meet a variety of people with a variety of interests. 