<p>son got e-mail yesterday that he is required to read some materials about meningitis and either get vaccine or waive getting it in writing. Apparantly, this is required for all Pa universities. that’s the only one we’ve learned about so far. and they have until August 8 to complete this requirement </p>
<p>I saw that too - better make an appointment! Did you all read about the Lewis Katz memorial yesterday? Pretty cool to see the Bill C’s (Clinton, Cosby) along with Rendell, Nutter, etc. there on the Temple campus. Sounds like Temple lost a great friend - very sad.</p>
<p>Def sounds like temple lost a great guy :(</p>
<p>I guess the “Class of 2018 Discussion” thread in the Temple forum has quieted down and everyone has moved over here so I"ll ask my question here - have you/your student figured out how their banking will work? </p>
<p>My daughter is opening a PNC Virtual Wallet account, which seems like it has some good benefits. PNC has a couple of branches in our town, too. We may get a credit card for her, that is linked to ours, for $$ items, like books and travel to get home. She’s been good about watching her money and pretty frugal so far. I’d like her to start building her credit, which might not be accomplished with having a linked card. But, she could potentially get her own card next year, with our co-signature.</p>
<p>Today, she got a mailing from Philadelphia Federal Credit Union, which has a campus ATM. Haven’t checked into PFCU at all. </p>
<p>Plans, thoughts, advice?</p>
<p>we are using our credit union only because we all have accounts there already, i can automatically move money from my accounts to his and he can make deposits at the Philly Federal Credit union due to some national credit union agreement. if we did not have the ease of transferring money going this route, I would have set up what your daughter is getting. also, if he finds the credit union route too cumbersome(as far as cash withdrawals and deposits), we will open up a pnc account too. He can get a credit card when he decides he is ready to. i warned him he will be bombarded with requests once he turns 18 so be careful with that. hopefully, he will give us a heads up when he decides to get a credit card and we will help him select a good one. His checking account with teh credit union includes a check card so he has the ability to use that card just about anywhere he wants. </p>
<h1>ctl987 - The credit union route sounds like a good one, especially with a check card. We’ll have to keep that in mind. We’ll see how this works, I guess. She is almost done setting it up.Thank you for letting me know how you are handling it. I appreciate it!</h1>
<p>Your son has graduated by now, I think - how was his graduation?</p>
<p>We are driving to Philly tomorrow so she can go to orientation on Mon and Tues.</p>
<p>Great graduation!!! How bout on your end? philly in July for us! </p>
<p>Nice! Her graduation was wonderful. She was done with school on May 20 and graduated May 28, so almost a month ago!! Do you plan to go to parent orientation?</p>
<p>Yes, both hubby and i plan to go. 4th visit to Temple for me and the kiddo(and there will be lots more for me!). 2nd for Dad. when i made hotel reservation and mentioned my kid was starting Temple, they were like hey, sign up for our frequent guest program!!! and hotels made me think. I really like the cute inn on campus, called the Conwell inn. it only has 18 rooms though and fills fast. other places we stayed at are Windsor suites, and I think the center city Sheraton. all three hotels were good experiences for us. unfortunately, parking is at a premium in downtown Philly so add another $40 a day for parking if you stay downtown. parking is only $15 at the Conwell inn but it is outside, not in a garage like the downtown hotels. parking at the Conwell inn is at a secure location though. i like downtown if I can’t get the Conwell inn cause it is a short and easy drive or subway ride to Temple and I try to get hotels within a 3 block radius of broad Street(that’s where the subway line is). oh and downtown is called Center City. the hotels I’ve been at are in Center City West. I think Broad Street may be the dividing line between east and west. </p>
<p>I just wanted to say, I am following and enjoying this thread. D’ 2015 is seriously looking at Temple for next year and I am really appreciative of the info you guys are sharing as you go. </p>
<p>glad we can be of help ohmomof2, Stay tuned for the fall and spring too!! she may have a pretty good handle of Temple with our comments alone! do u have any specific questions about Temple?</p>
<p>Not yet. She did a week-long women in engineering program there last summer, and engineering is a possibility for her. She will qualify for the presidential scholarship so perhaps Honors program too. She will do an official visit this year at some point, but the week gave us a good idea of the campus and surrounding area, just not many students around. </p>
<p>Well actually heck if anyone knows…</p>
<p>Are math/science courses generally graded on a curve?</p>
<p>How have your kids found housing options if you didn’t sign on to Temple until May 1?</p>
<p>How about class registration - good advising, trouble getting into required/desired courses?</p>
<p>I realize you guys may not have these answers, yet :)</p>
<p>pretty sure honors gets guaranteed housing so she’s good there.is presidential the top scholly? if so, she’s also admitted into honors. i do not know about math/science being graded on a curve. ask futuresdoctor, he’s on CC and a current temple student. i can tell you more about class registration after orientation. I think it’s better for the kids in honors and after her first semester she’ll get priority registraton as an honors student. i have heard chemistry is a weed out course so be on guard for that. and regarding honors. at least last year and I assume this is still the same, kids who got the top 2 scholarship options were automatic admits to the honors program. As i understand it, she;ll need to keep a 3.25 to stay in honors and a 3.0 to keep the scholarship. is she looking anywhere else? i’ve heard schools like to recruit female engineer students so she may get some pretty nice options at other schools too. </p>
<p>Thank you! She’s considering engineering but will not apply to any schools where it is difficult to switch to pre-med or something else if she decides to. So places like Carnegie Mellon or Columbia are out because switching is just like transferring to a different school, and so are NYU Poly, RPI, etc. As I understand it, Temple is NOT that way, it’s a matter of choosing different courses only.</p>
<p>taht’s good about Temple. and honors handles a lot of the advising so the honors dept can help her with course selection too. sounds like Temple is a great option for her and she gets a nice scholarship to boot! We are estimating out of pocket this year to be around 18000, which is mostly room and board, school fees, books, and miscellanous expneses. This is still a lot of money but is really quite reasonable for colleges these days. My son got a scholarhship too and that cut his costs by 14000 and made Temple a good choice from a financial standpoint. </p>
<p>Hi, #OHMomof2 - glad you are finding this thread helpful. I am happy to share anything I have learned.</p>
<p>We picked my D up from her orientation yesterday. She enjoyed being on campus and spending a night in the dorms. She prepared for class registration by knowing the classes she needed for her major, and actual times those classes were offered. (I got this good advice from the thread “Parents of the HS Class of 2014” - another great thread). Some kids were learning everything as they were registering - stressful.</p>
<h1>ctl987 - I saw the PFCU right in the student center - very accessible. Also, thanks for the tips on hotels. So far, we’ve stayed at the Omni in the Old City area and Embassy Suites in Logan Circle. We liked both hotels, and booked them on Hotels.com, so the rate was reasonable. However, we are looking for something a little closer to Broad Street so I will check those out.</h1>
<h1>WindowMomto2 - S was at same orientation session. I went to Parent orientation that Monday. He also enjoyed staying in the dorm overnight. Got to exchange phone#s with a lot of students.</h1>
<p>We’ve stayed at the Palomar near Rittenhouse Sq. Very nice hotel but on the pricey side. They run a lot of promotions though. Short subway ride to campus. I think parking is expensive regardless of where you stay in Philly.</p>
<p>Also trying to decide about banking. He currently has a student account that’s linked to our account with Bank of America. BOA has a branch on Broad Street but it’s on the edge of the campus. Kinda like the idea of having a PNC acct linked with his OWLcard.</p>
<p>@mom4cw - I went back and forth about the parent orientation. We had already attended 2 different informational days,and we had our younger D with us, since we headed to the shore after orientation. My D wanted to go on her own, so that is what we did. She also thought orientation was great - like your son, phone numbers, Instagrams, etc. </p>
<p>How was the parent orientation for you? Did you learn new info about Temple? I’d be interested in reading about what you learned. I am sure I would have gotten some good info had I attended.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tip about the Palomar! We keep looking at this hotel - we ate at their restaurant and the food was amazing. We may give it a try. I agree - parking seems expensive everywhere. We’ve now stayed at the Omni twice. It’s a nice area to walk - very close to the Liberty Bell, etc. We’ve also stayed at the Embassy Suites near Logan Square. It isn’t too far from Broad St. They include breakfast (at a TGI Friday’s downstairs) - one less stop in the morning. I’m so glad to hear about where the other Temple families have stayed. </p>
<p>Sounds like Bank of America is very close for him and you’ve already got accounts with them - that’s a great option. We are still figuring out the credit card issue. For her freshman year, we will probably get one that is linked to ours, and then maybe next year we can co-sign with her, so she can build credit. </p>
<p>August 19th is just around the corner. I am getting a little sad thinking about it. I am really excited for her, though - for all of the rising freshmen. They will have a great year!</p>
<p>We just got back from orientation! It was great and I did find it helpful to go again as a parent. had a chance to have some south side cheesestaks!!! and my husband and I enjoyed all the philly food options, other than cheesesteak 
Re orientation itself, My kid got into honors and honors had a meet and greet with the honors parents. it was a much smaller group than in the past and that part was really cool. got a lot of info as well as chances to ask questions. kids get help with advisors to set up schedule on second day, i also had a chance to chat with other parents. i also learned we need to order a long bed because he lives in one of the 2 dorms that does not have extra long twins; he is 6’2". Missed the bursar’s section, which for us was one of the first, I likely would have gotten good info out of that too as there are some questions i still have that was not on website. anyway, just wanted to give soem examples of how I found parent orientation helpful. only a month left… Any other parents going back and forth between excitement and crying? </p>
<p>ohmom, my kid found advising helpful. for the honors kids, most of those kids are advised by honors; a couple of majors(or maybe it is schools), one being the fine arts, are not, i can’t remember the second area they did not primarily advise; i def remembering the fine arts being an area where honors did secondary rather than primary advising. For my kid, He had a chance to ask about professors. he got through class registration fine. He did start putting some classes together the night before orientation but needed to add one more class and they helped with that. they also made sure he took honors classes for his gen eds. and looked over and agreed with the classes he picked out before he met with them. He pointed out the advising for honors took longer than for some other kids, which he did not find a 100 positive issue but i actually think it was good. During orientation, he also learned how to navigate through the tu portal sytem better, easier ways to view classes, and a number of other practical things that helped him be more knowledgable by the end of orientation. also, during the honors parents meet and greet, questions came up about how honors helped the premed or grad school bound kids with selecting classes, should they take classes they got AP credit for(which meant they would lose the AP credit but this was still a good idea in some situations) and a lot of other questions. I would have loved more help like that when I was in school! from what i heard, another kid, i think in business and not honors, set up his own schedule but could ask people questions while he did so. i think this kid was in a big group but there were a fair amount of advisors around as needed while he registered for classes. also, there is a freshman seminar class my kid has to take and I think all kids take. this class is from 6 to 9 PM one weeknight and includes field trips in the Philly area. i think it is with the same kids in his orientation group, several of which are in the same school he is. Could be wrong on that point though. he def made soem friends while there too. the impression I walked away is that Temple takes steps to help the kids acclimate to college and Philadelphia far more than my alma mater ever did. my alma mater is an even bigger state school(not in pa) and I really appreciated the extra steps Temple seems to be taking with the kids, orientation being one of them. </p>