<p>This morning I spoke with a mother whose frosh-to-be son recently returned from orientation at his college of choice. Well, at least it was his college of choice until the orientation junket.</p>
<p>He didn't have an awful time, the mom told me, and he's not ready to pull the plug on his decision, but he was definitely disappointed. The main complaint: "All I met were nerds."</p>
<p>Well, interestingly enough, the Princeton Review book does send out a nerd alert for this boy's school, but--on the other hand--it's a public university with more than 20,000 students, so there must be someone around without a pocket protector. </p>
<p>Yet the issue here isn't the nerd count on that particular campus, but whether other parents out there have been in a similar situation, and, if so, how did you advise your kids? Were any of them so disillusioned that they wanted to make other plans? If they did matriculate in the fall, was the orientation angst largely unfounded?</p>
<p>I had a similar experience when I attended orientation last year....I ultimately ended up transferring. </p>
<p>I think orientation gives a much more complete look at what a school (and freshman year) is like, much more so than a regular campus visit. I remember coming home from orientation and just feeling like I visited a totally different school than I originally chose.</p>
<p>Some schools, S's included, schedule orientation sessions by majors. This student may only have seen a high percentage of kids majoring in the more "nerdy" fields and not a true representation of the whole student population. I can say this as the mom of an engineering kid, although not a nerd. ;)</p>
<p>An interesting situation in our familywas that the actual school experience did not live up to the enthusiasm and positive experience of orientation for quite a while.</p>
<p>At DS's orientation parents were housed across campus from students. They were put in with random roommates....we went our separate ways to get settled in and DS turned me down cold on meeting up for dinner. He hung out in the room most of the night waiting for the random roommate who never showed...was bored and kept calling me but was unwilling to leave the room to meet me.<br>
The orientation was great for getting class registration, meeting financial aid people, and eventually he also met up with his freshman roommate but the first night was a downer.<br>
Orientation is not representative of freshman year.. in our experience. He went on to have a great freshman year and is in his third year now. YMMV.</p>
<p>My D loved her orientation but was not thrilled with the school freshman year. Perhaps the snow, which was missing in the summer, had a lot to do with it (since she is a Southern Californian going to school in the midwest).</p>
<p>my-3-sons, we are off to engineering orientation next week and I am curious to see what my non-nerdy son will have to say. One of the main reasons he chose this school was that it has a well-rounded student body ...</p>
<p>S2 had his Orientation last week. He decribed it as "boring but not too bad". In spite of that description, he seemed fairly upbeat when telling us about everything he did there. All the free stuff they gave the kids really helped,lol.<br>
We had visited the sch. last winter after he was accepted. </p>
<p>The one I was really worried about was S's friend/roommate. He never got the opportunity to visit the school after acceptance. We invited him to go with us but he couldn't work it out with his work schedule. So Friend of S had never laid eyes on the campus until Orientation. I was holding my breath. Luckily, S came home and said Friend/roommate loved it...exhale.</p>
<p>Maybe expectations for orientation are too high. Orientation tends to be highly structured and for an independent student who is looking forward to life on his own that may be a turn off. While there should be some fun involved, there is a lot of "business" to take care of at orientation - not the same as walking around a campus with other not-newbies and the day to day college life routine.</p>
<p>As far as the student population, orientation can also be tough - may be one of the first times new students are brought together in a large group - everyone may have their guard up to show off their place - whether the smart student, the jock, the party person, whatever - a natural reaction of people in a new situation.</p>
<p>I hope your friends S can resolve his uncertainty!</p>
<p>The campus tour and presentation is a sales pitch pure and simple. At orientation reality comes to the fore. Wanna take that nifty Freshman Seminar course Living in Cyberspace? Fugettaboutit, closed out. The only recitation section open in the first semester econ class you must take is at 8am. The foray into the dining hall that first morning among a sea of unfamiliar faces raised your angst to new heights. The walk across the grassy quad on a perfect spring morning is replaced by a spring during and afternoon thunder storm. And the suite style residence hall you toured is now a distant memory. You're in a 60's dorm with the showers/bath room fifty feet down the hall.</p>
<p>Another thing about Orientation is that lots of kids (not mine) are accompanied by their parent(s) and so probably tend to act a little differently than when they are there on their own. S estimated about half the kids at his Orientation session had a least one parent. Also S's big state u. was offering 8 different Orientation sessions so the kids met at Orientation are only a fraction of the new incoming class.</p>
<p>I hope the kid the OP refers to will find a much different atmosphere when he arrives in Aug.</p>
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Another thing about Orientation is that lots of kids (not mine) are accompanied by their parent(s) and so probably tend to act a little differently than when they are there on their own.
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I hope the kid the OP refers to will find a much different atmosphere when he arrives in Aug.
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<p>I don't have any official stats on this, but it seems to me that more colleges than ever before are holding their orientation sessions (and often several of them, as PackMom and others have noted) during the summer.</p>
<p>In my (ancient) era, orientation more typically took place right at the beginning of the school year, with frosh arriving on campus several days before the majority of upperclassmen. This is still true at many schools, of course, and I wonder if these term-time orientations are preferable to the summer stints. For starters, the parents usually only hang around for the first day or two, when there are special receptions (etc.) for them, and then they take off. Also, students get to meet their actual roommates and set up their rooms, so it makes it easier to approach the orientation from a "this-is-the-real-deal" perspective.</p>
<p>I suppose that there are also pluses to the earlier orientations, but I think that the term-time sessions may be more conducive to a strong start. Other thoughts?</p>
<p>My Ss orientation is the week before classes start, and I am very grateful for it because he will be on the west coast, and he won't have to make an extra, expensive trip. Parents only have activities scheduled for them on move-in day, and you are expected to say good-bye in late afternoon of that day. We'll leave that night. </p>
<p>I have no idea how he'll feel about his orientation, but he'll be living in his own dorm room with his assigned roommate. The students will have a week to sort everything out and should be feeling pretty comfortable on campus before classes start. There are quite a few scheduled activities for them, but plenty of free time, too. I'll report in September how my S felt about it.</p>
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My Ss orientation is the week before classes start, and I am very grateful for it because he will be on the west coast, and he won't have to make an extra, expensive trip.
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<p>Those are the orientation schedules that I remember. As you point out, aside from the other assorted drawbacks of mid-summer orientations, the airfare/travel-expense issue can be a biggie. In my day, it was typically the public universities, which drew a largely local student body, that held those sessions in the summer. But today, with many colleges and universities attracting applicants from across the country (and even from across the oceans) the summer orientations strike me as potentially pricey and impractical.</p>
<p>Last year our daughter attended Freshman Orientation (2 days) in June and a parent was required to be there. We were together for meals only. There were evening social activities for the students and I opted to leave right after dinner of day one. When I returned in the AM to meet her for breakfast she was in tears. The girl she was supposed to room with for the year had changed her mind. The girl she was rooming with for Orientation did not speak to her, or anyone else, at all. The evening social activities were "dumb." She begged me to take her home right then and there, I refused and she stuck it out for the rest of the day which mainly was registering for classes based on placement tests taken on day 1.</p>
<p>I agree that the expectations for Orientation are too high. Unfortunately when she arrived in August it was 2 or 3 more days of just "dumb" Freshman activities. Freshman year was "okay," and she is going back but probably only for this year.</p>
<p>S's private that draws from all regions still had its orientation right before school, at least in 2005. D's public has a choice of summer orientation dates and several dates right before school starts when the dorms are already open for a fee; the school's stated position is that they hold back some seats in freshman courses for each session of orientation, including those at popular times, but the word among the prospective students was that the reality is that the odds of the preferred courses/times are better the earlier you go, so everyone she knows chose a summer session. If we were OOS and traveling a significant distance, it would have been good to know we had a choice of the before-school dates. We're just back from D's orientation, and it really didn't affect her feel about the school one way or the other, but I think it would have been better if it had been closer to the time for school, because she is so totally focused on her summer job and getting in all of the socializing she can with friends that she is barely paying attention to the looming college experience and I'm not sure much registered. (She wanted to leave it early so she could get back to work sooner.)</p>
<p>S2's orientation was last month & there were 2 1/2 days of separate sessions and activities for parents and incoming freshmen. S1's orientation 4 years ago was five days before classes started & parents were only invited to stay the first day to move them in, and attend scheduled activities.<br>
I much preferred the latter. Only one trip to the school, kids moved into their actual rooms, and most of the info we got in 2 1/2 days last month we got in one day at the other college (without all the rah-rah stuff which was really unnecessary)</p>
<p>Wow. So sorry to hear these tales, especially if a bad 2 day experience colored an entire year. Hope that sophomore year for some will provide more positive experiences - better courses, more meaningul extracurriculars, more like-minded friends. I think it might all shake out a little better the second year. My D's orientation took her from a state of huge apprehension to a complete embrace and held her in good stead through freshman year -she loved her entire 4 year experience.</p>
<p>D's orientation is next week, when we will have to fly across the country. I will have to pay for 1 hotel room 4 nights for me, car rental, 2 plane tix, plus the parent orientation fee. Not counting etc's. I'm ****ed. An extra 1500-2k. But she claims that's the only way she can get the classes she wants. I'm not so sure. And next month back we go again, only 3 of us this time. Should cost me another 5k. I'll tell you who's the one having second thoughts: ME!!</p>