<p>how long is it...what exactly do you do..one of the other posts said it was a week or so where there is frosh training for parties lol..summore details please!</p>
<p>varies very much by school. Some schools have days during the summer for orientation, some schools have the freshmen move in earlier than everyone else.</p>
<p>It really varies by school. I remember one of the schools I looked at had freshmen move in a week ahead of time. I am at the University of NH now. We had the official orientation in June, where we selected classes and stuff. There was one one day session (that's what I went to), and several two day sessions. The two days weren't really necessary IMO. It was just a chance to spend a night in the dorm and do all that get to know you stuff. At all the orientations we chose classes, and stuff like that.
In August we moved in on the Friday before classes started (they started on Monday). The rest of the school moved in on Sunday. The extra two days gave us an opportunity to get to know the people on our floor, get to find our way around campus, etc. We also had a couple of mandatory meetings, and we had to see some skits about all those topics like drinking, sex, etc. Everyone I talked to got more out of the extra days in August than the orientation in June, which is why I said earlier, that I was glad I went to the one day session</p>
<p>Basically all orientation is is a time to walk around campus and meet kids you'll be going to school with and get to know the prison i mean dorm life that you'll be living in for a couple of years. You'll do those teambuilding activities and they usuall have a picnic. You'll meet a bunch of people.</p>
<p>my (Brandeis) orientation was awesome. unlike other schools, it didn't start until right before classes began, which i prefer.</p>
<p>basically, a group of eight first-years was in an AIDE group. (Advise, integrate, develop, educate) with an OL. (upper-class orientation leader). for a week, we ate all our meals together, did fun ice-breakers, and went to various activities like an amazing speaker, meet-the-author of a book we read over the summer, history of the school, drug-and-alcohol program, BBQ, etc. There were optional programs like dealing with a roommate, handling classes, etc. At night, there were fun programs like comedians, hypnotist shows, Ice-Cream socials, bands, carnivals, movies on a giant screen (animal house), etc. At the end, the entire class went on a cruise of Boston Harbor.</p>
<p>Orientation week was a week I'll never forget, and I still am friendly with everyone from my AIDE group, and good friends with a few of them. It's not uncommon for an OL to invite his/her AIDE group to activities during the course of the year. (Our OL invited us to her off-campus labor day BBQ.)</p>
<p>My orientation (Rochester) was for the week before classes started. Basically it was a series of events that occured throughout the college so that students would be able to acclimate to the college environment. There were multi-cultural events (Rochester is big on improving its Multi-cultural'ness'), shows by the various performance groups, things on sex, drugs, etc.</p>
<p>Yeay for Orientations!</p>
<p>Our orientation program is run by the APU Office of Student Success and is made up of 5 separate programs--Alpha, Beginnings, Orientation, Strengths, and Bridges
Essentially, freshemen come on campus the Saturday before school starts (school starts Wednesday). They are checked in by Alpha Leaders and moved into their dorms by Strengths Counselors--both of these leadership positions will meet with them later in the semester.</p>
<p>Saturday and Sunday night, the Alpha Leaders do skits for the freshmen detailing various parts of APU student life. On Monday, the Alpha Leaders take their Alpha groups (8-15 freshmen in a small group that will meet throughout the semester--although most of the freshmen do not yet realize this) to a professor's house, where they will eat dinner and get to meet that prof.
Tuesday is left fairly open as a prep day for school. Orientation continues with activities through Friday.
Finally, the freshmen all take an orientation course throughout fall semester called Beginnings. Beginnings is a 1-unit pass/fail course in which freshmen are in their Alpha groups (led by their Alpha Leader and assisted by their Strengths Counselor). Within the context of this course, freshmen explore their Strengths (through the Gallup StrengthsFinder and 1-on-1 meetings with their Strengths Counselor), followed by weeks on sexual assault, addiction, gender issues, racism/anti-semitism, diversity, living authentic Christianity, and learning to love.
Following Beginnings, they are given the option of continuing this development through the Strengths and Alpha programs, which about 1/3-1/2 of the freshmen apply for (of which, less than 200 are accepted).</p>
<p>yeesh. some of these sound annoyingly intense.</p>
<p>our 'orientation' was just one day on campus in the spring (they held several from February through June). you listened to speeches, watched skits about alcohol and sex and stuff, and did ice-breaker activities in the morning. then you ate lunch, and then met with advisors and signed up for classes in the afternoon.</p>
<p>the week before school started they had a big 'welcome week' with meetings for different colleges and events every night, as well as club fairs and job fairs. you meet a lot of people and eat free food and watch movies, it's rad.</p>