<p>Is it really necessary for parents to attend orientation? It's a two day event, next week, for my s but the parents' portion is only lunch the first day followed by about 3 hours of Q&A, tours, etc. I attended Open House in the fall and Admitted Students Day in the spring. The college is about 2 hours away so it doesn't make sense for me to stay over. Therefore, we'd have to take two cars. And I'd have to miss work. S has traveled on his own and is more than able to drive to the school, check himself in, etc. </p>
<p>I'm feeling a bit guilty about not going. I always feel like I'll miss that one bit of very important information that I could never have gotten anywhere else.</p>
<p>Next week? Next week we’re in mid-June, and many kids haven’t graduated high school yet. Orientations usually happen in August, a few days before upperclassmen arrive.</p>
<p>Need more info before saying I’d skip this without guilt.</p>
<p>heyalb, different schools have different ways of handling orientation. It is quite common for larger schools to offer multiple sessions of orientation over the course of the summer. And for schools out West, “summer” starts in mid-May when most of our high school graduations are held. (The school year starts in early to mid-August.)</p>
<p>For example, Boston College offers 7 orientation sessions – 6 are in June and July and the last one is in August right before classes start. (The last session is generally restricted to students traveling from far away, so that they do not have to incur the cost of making a separate round trip for orientation.) Our State universities have a similar type of schedule – with sessions staring as early as March or April – so that they can spread out class registrations over a long period of time.</p>
<p>heyalb, there are two different types of Orientation schedules.</p>
<p>One type – often favored by state universities that draw the majority of their students from nearby – consists of relatively small groups of students attending Orientation on any of several dates during the summer. For this type of Orientation, which usually lasts two days, students live temporarily in a dorm reserved for the purpose (not in the rooms they will later occupy during the school year). </p>
<p>The other type – favored by colleges that tend to attract a lot of students from distant places – consists of a program for all the students together, which takes place in the few days just before classes start. For this type of Orientation, students move into their regular dorm rooms just before the program starts. </p>
<p>One of my kids attended a university with the first type of Orientation schedule, the other is now at a university with the second type. I don’t see any great advantage of one over the other (except that the first type of Orientation is very inconvenient for the rare student who has to travel very far to get to the campus).</p>
<p>stillnadine, is there parking available for students who arrive at Orientation on their own? It’s worth checking out in advance if your son will be attending alone. The university might be expecting students to be accompanied by parents, who would stay in nearby hotels and would not need overnight parking. But if your son attends alone, overnight parking is a necessity.</p>
<p>Kids have choices of when to attend Orientation. Those who are still in school and have finals next week would simply choose a later session.</p>
<p>Where I live in Maryland, though, high school finals for seniors are already over. A student would be quite free to go to college orientation unless his graduation date conflicts with it. My son attended a mid-June orientation at the University of Maryland. Graduation and finals were long over by then.</p>
<p>my D has orientation next week also. Not that unusual. She was given multiple days to chose from. There is an additional orientation in the fall when freshman arrive earlier than upper classmen.</p>
<p>Well, I do live in the south and school’s been out for a week, for seniors with a lot of APs and no finals, about 2 weeks. </p>
<p>I think they offer at least 3 different choices of dates for orientation. S picked the dates that worked best with his summer plans. He will also attend the 4 day program that begins right before school starts. </p>
<p>I did call the school, before I posted, and the folks were as lovely as usual. But, of course, they can’t really assess “what I’ll be missing” so they leave the decision up to the parent. They will cover pretty much what’s been covered before: their LAC freshman program (which sounds wonderful), housing, campus safety, campus life, etc.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m asking is do most parents attend? Will my s be the lone guy without a parent in tow? Not that this would matter to him. He’s already connected with other students, those he met at Admitted students day and via Facebook. I’m a very “hands-off” kind of parent and see college as his “thing” now, so I don’t have any great need to tag along. </p>
<p>The one reason to go, that has occured to me, is that in the past I met parents who had kids considering the school. This would be a chance to meet parents of those actually attending. Is there any benefit to that?</p>
<p>If your son’s school is anything like the one my son attended, the parent won’t be “in tow.” At my son’s school, the parents and students were separated during the first five minutes and didn’t see each other again until the very end of the students’ orientation program.</p>
<p>I could have ditched the orientation program and gone to the movies, for all my son would have known.</p>
<p>I did not mean to imply anything negative. I meant “this school” because there are a fair number of students who begin school there who are older than 18 (average age of the student there I think is 23, but I might be off by a year in either direction). I just think that students who transfer in, or are freshmen at age 21 are less likely to have parents join them, but that is just my opinion.</p>
<p>Ah…but MANY schools are also OUT of school in the south. Both of the colleges my kids attended had multiple orientation sessions to choose from…beginning mid-June (that’s now!!) and going through the summer. </p>
<p>Not every school has orientation in August.</p>
<p>Northeastmom, I hope you get a chance to visit UNCA during the school year and see the campus and meet students. We visited about a dozen LACs in the last two years (public and private) and there was nothing about UNCA that has led me to believe that the students are much different than students elsewhere, including Washington and Lee, Davidson, Furman, Guilford, Rhodes, etc. (Maybe a bit artier and “hipper” but colllege students, none the less.)</p>
<p>I know you are really, really concerned about the graduation rate. But I really doubt we will see all that many 23 year olds at orientation. I would guess that all most all of the freshman class is coming straight from high school.</p>
<p>I was told that the average student age was a bit older and that many worked while taking classes and that might account for their graduation rate. They told me that the average age of a student at UNC-A is 23 or 24. They told me that they have more “nontraditional” students, which could mean a variety of things. </p>
<p>The transfer students do have an orientation as well and that is what I was referring to. I would think that any new student, regardless of age, would want to attend their orientation. I saw that transfers were also offered an August date (don’t know if freshmen were), but attending that late is discouraged because one would then be registering for classes in August. The freshmen orientation dates were removed from their website.</p>
<p>stillnadine,We are also in NC. Both my kids (at two different NC public uni’s) went to Orientation on their own. S1 caught ride with a girl he knew fr. h.s. S2 had two friends fr. h.s who were also attending Orientation ride along on the four hr. trip with him.
They were both very comfortable going on their own. I would have gone if they had felt differently.
Honestly, I think they enjoyed it more without DH and me tagging along.</p>
<p>Last year UNCW had all of their Orientations in June. Neighbor’s kid had to miss graduation practice to go to Orientation.</p>
<p>We attended the parents’ portion of S’s mid-summer orientation 6 years ago, and it was largely a waste of time and money for us to travel there and stay in a hotel. We picked up a few bits of info, but nothing you couldn’t find out by looking at the school’s website, posing a question on CC, or using some common sense. D’s orientation is next week (mid-size private university with multiple orientation schedules)–she’s fitting it in between finals and graduation so she won’t miss any work. I’ve already visited the school, and we’ll be attending parents’ weekend in October, so I can’t see a good reason to attend orientation. I’m sure many other students will be parent-less.</p>