<p>Rather than requesting a formal change in advisers, could your son perhaps go consult with a professor or a dean? Someone in his department, for instance, should be able to tell him whether or not he has met requirements for his major, at the very least.</p>
<p>I agree with everyone on here suggesting that the requirements for graduation should be pretty easy to figure out. Possibly, your son has a specific situation that is complicating things - a transfer credit, or a summer course, or a study abroad. In that case, he should just go to the adviser with as simple a question as possible. He doesn’t need to go into - or ask for - a whole long explanation about requirements, just “I took Econ 101 over the summer at a local Community College. Does this count toward my major? If not, does it count toward my required number of courses?”</p>
<p>Sometimes, the department makes it easy by providing helpful templates and checklists that students can start with and adjust to fit individual needs. For example:</p>
<p>Do you know from your son what his exact questions or area of confusion are? It seems to me that if he is asking for your help, there must be something in particular on his his mind that he is worried about. I think you should try to work with your son to figure out what questions need answering ahead of any meeting – it’s possible that things may become more clear to him just as you go through that process. </p>
<p>You would need to do that anyway in order to be of any help at all in the advising session. Whether you ultimately decide to attend or not, it would be a waste of time to arrive unprepared.</p>
<p>I guess the point of confusion here on CC is that generally the requirements for graduation are clear enough – one would expect a college senior to have a good handle on that already. But perhaps your son has an unusual major or combination of majors?</p>
<p>Definitely do not attend this meeting…it would be highly inappropriate. This would be analogous to you attending one of your son’s job interviews or a performance review with his boss in the future. </p>
<p>Also coming from the lens of someone who hires recent grads (echoing nellieh post #15), your son will enter the workforce soon and needs to begin to learn to be independent, ask questions / get clarification, deal with ambiguity, learn to interact with poor communicators, etc. This is a great opportunity for him to start doing this. </p>
<p>sigh…the saga of the “trophy kids” continues (great book btw)</p>
<p>Can the two of you sit with the course catalog and carefully map out the actual requirements? Can you do this exercise before the advising session and if it can’t be figured out exactly, can the two of you formulate and write down the specific questions about ambiguities that you need answered. Writing them out as yes/no questions is really helpful. This way, your S can go without you, but has your help and guidance in preparing for the session. Whenever a yes no question is answered ambiguously, he can just repeat it (so is that a yes or a no?). This preparation should go a long way toward solving the problem.</p>
<p>I would say no to the meeting. He is a senior and needs to handle this one on one.</p>
<p>However, you can help your son figure out answers to his questions. I have to believe there is an on-line list of graduation requirements and courses required for his major. He can also check with the registrar and bring his spread sheet with him. S’s school sent HIM the list at the end of junior year so he knew exactly how many credits he needed to graduate and which of the senior level classes he needed for his major.</p>
<p>If your son feels the advisor is scattered, he needs, as someone suggested, to go into the meeting with “yes” and “no” questions only and write the answers down. Then go over to the registrar to confirm. Unless he has put together a very unique major, I can’t see big problems.</p>
<p>This will be a great real life lesson for him in how to solve problems by doing it on his own.</p>
<p>I don’t know how the advisor will react. It could be an embarassment.
My advisor only spent less than 2 minutes for me. I asked which classes I should take to prepare for my career. He said I could take any classes as long as they met the graduation requirements. And the session ended.</p>
<p>Perhaps your son could ask a friend to go with him, and explain the extra person by saying that he wants to be sure to understand everything that is important. Taking a parent might be a bit odd at this point in the student’s life, as he’s a senior, but taking a friend would make sense. It doesn’t sound as though he needs you as his parent, but rather as an extra set of eyes and ears.</p>
<p>Why attend? Look at the Undergraduate Catalog online. Sit down with your son and make course selections- at home. Besides, he can drop/and add without the counselor’s ok, can’t he? YOU should know what he needs to take. He should know too, but if things are falling-through the cracks, YOU should know. Don’t leave this -to any counselor. Sounds like you should be more involved. But NOT present. Is this a private school, or public?</p>
<p>If your son is a senior and not a freshman, I would say that you should not attend the meeting. It will look weird. I also strongly advise that your son not take a friend. The advisor should not talk to students about private academic matters with their peers present. FERPA law applies here.</p>
<p>As others have said, sitting down with your son and the catalog/audit/curriculum chart and helping him try to work this out is more helpful than you going into the advising meeting with him.</p>
<p>I have to say, I agree with above comments.
I wouldn’t attend if they were a freshman & certainly not as a senior.
But since your S seems to need practice speaking up and clarifying questions, you could always role play with him a bit.</p>
<p>I would suggest go to one of his favorite professors, explain his advisor is not helping, and ask his questions. I’d also suggest he do his homework and figured out everything he possibly can figure out in advance of the meeting.</p>
<p>I can’t envision a situation - even with my current freshman - where I would attend that meeting. Best he learn to advocate for himself and you can help prepare him for the meeting. </p>
<p>The whole issue is rather nebulous and it’s unclear what the problem really is - or more specifically - what questions your son needs answered. As others have said I would work with him to review the course catalog and formulate very specific concerns and questions. If he walks into the meeting without an agenda or game plan he will likely leave without what he needs.</p>
<p>I hate to say this - but if your S is a senior it may already be too late to meet all requirements and graduate on time. It doesn’t sound like he has been monitoring this throughout the previous years and is just now questioning where he stands.</p>
<p>I helped my S2 a with some course selections and helped him plan out courses to get him to graduation on time. His freshman advisor was good but she left and her replacement wasn’t helpful at all. My aid to S2 was only through email and phone calls to S2. Don’t think I’d go to an advisors office with a college senior.</p>
<p>Still not sure of the classification of the student. If the student is a junior or senior, I would definitely NOT go. Freshman or sophomore, maybe…</p>
<p>But either way, I’d work through the degree plan with the student ahead of time and go in prepared to LET THE STUDENT TALK, and be there only for back up.</p>
<p>Considering the OP now mentioned the son is a college senior rather than a freshman or even sophomore, I’d agree with others on revising my advice. </p>
<p>In that case, the son should attend the advising session alone without parent. Considering he’s going to be expected to handle himself in the workplace and life in some months, it’s high time he started learning that now if he hasn’t done so already. </p>
<p>When I was in undergrad, I handled everything…including paying what my near-full ride scholarship didn’t cover. I am willing to concede some parental help with academic advising in the first year or two as some colleges/universities graduation requirements/regulations can be pretty byzantine<em>, advisors can be pretty clueless at times</em>, and/or they may change requirements midstream without grandfathering students who are in their last few years of college.</p>
<p>To be fair, I attended an LAC where requirements were clearly spelled out so I had no problems figuring out what courses to take to graduate on time.</p>
<ul>
<li>Some friends’/colleagues’ at some large universities.</li>
</ul>
<p>I agree, son should attend the meeting alone, having done the homework of documenting all his credits to this point and reconciling them with degree requirements. That said, I would also ask him what his biggest concerns about the meeting were, so that I could be supportive or help him learn to troubleshoot for himself. </p>
<p>Specific questions can then be posed to the advisor. It may be late to change advisors, but if there are unresolved issues post-meeting, he could run them by another professor he finds more approachable in the department, without dissing his advisor. If that isn’t isn’t an option, academic deans can be helpful and registrars can help look over any errors in transcripts, etc. I would not want to make this about the department head’s deficiencies, barring misconduct. I had a department head for my advisor in college and while an expert in the field, she was less than helpful about college pragmatics, having moved onto broader territory.</p>
<p>Learning to expand options for problem solving, priceless.
Good luck!</p>