<p>I wouldn’t sweat this one too much. Thirty years ago there was no such thing as parents going to orientation. These were created due to parent demand. It is nice if you can go, but I wouldn’t worry at all if you can’t. We have had 3 kids attend college. It was impossible for us to attend with our first. He was fine and the parent sessions were all seperate from the students. We attended them for the younger 2 but it would have been fine if we had skipped.</p>
<p>My orientation was on the 29th of may and there was a date before that as well.</p>
<p>Oh, and my mom did come with me to mine. :)</p>
<p>I went to my son’s orientation but I chose to go because it was across the country and I was not going to move him in the Fall. It was a chance to meet his roommate and those parents (worth the entire trip for me).<br>
That said, the orientation itself did not add anything to my knowledge of the school or anything I needed. I remember sitting through the Health Center session while parents asked the most ridiculous questions ever.<br>
If your child does not have specific special needs i.e. health, learning disabilities, etc. and he is a self-starter (which it sounds like he is) I would skip it. There will be lots of students there without parents.</p>
<p>At S2’s Orientation last summer, each kid was given ID card type things on a cord to hang around their neck for admittance to stuff like meals in the cafeteria,the student rec. center,etc.
The cords were different colors based on which state the student was fr. S2 said he noticed that most of the instate kids were on their own while most of the out of state kids had parents with them…makes sense.</p>
<p>My d attended her freshmen orientation last week, flying down on her own.</p>
<p>She did fine without me. The school is very responsive, so I know if I have questions I can always call. And we can check out the room, roommates and campus when we take her to school in August (she wants us to go with her then).</p>
<p>I vote for you to stay home.</p>
<p>Depends on the school. A close friend had a daughter attend UT and found parents were somewhat superfluous at orientation. So two years later, the dad dropped his son at A&M for orientation and headed back to Houston. Son called within the hour and asked the dad to return; son was the only one without parents present. Dad turned around and then participated in a full set of activities.</p>
<p>My Son will be going to a large State U. They have Student Orientation and Registration throughout the summer. I’m going in order to do mundane things like: Scope out which is the best bank to open an account; see the dorm room so we can plan on what to bring; etc. Son also agreed to let me help during registration. Son wants to double major, we have been planning out his courses for the 4+ years, and we are not quite sure how his AP’s will play into the core requirements (Student Handbook is unclear whether AP classes can be used to fulfil core requirements). We don’t want the advisor to mess up his plans without a good reason.</p>
<p>Other than that, I don’t see that parents will learn much that you don’t learn when you drop off your kid in August, or can find out online. With thousands of kids being dropped off, August will be like a zoo. So going to summer orientation will be a lot more laid back experience.</p>
<p>If you have been there twice before, and it is just lunch, Q&A, and a tour, I would skip it.</p>
<p>Even though I will be flying with DS to his orientation (OOS and far from home), I will not attend the parents’ orientation program. I’m going to scout the town, find the location of the Walmart/BBB/Target, etc. so that I can easily find them in the fall when I help him move into his dorm. </p>
<p>DD is going with me so I’ll take some time to check out the campus and do fun vacation-like things in the college town with her while DS in at orientation. I figure this will give her a chance to get to know the place where her brother (and best friend) will be living for the next 4 years. Maybe this will help her picture the places he is talking about when they talk/email each other during the school year. </p>
<p>I don’t feel the need to attend the parents’ orientation program. The information you need to know about your child’s college is all online. You can always call the university if you have any questions during the school year (provided your child has given permission to the university to talk to you about him/her.)</p>
<p>I am also flying with him because his college doesn’t have a major airport, and DS will have to find a way from the airport to his college (about 45 minutes away). Thought I would rent a car and drive him to his college, then help him figure out the shuttle system from airport to college town so he can fly home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. </p>
<p>I imagine there are lots of kids at orientation sans parents. Many kids will drive themselves to orientation and, as an earlier poster noted, even if parents do attend, the parents are separated from their student at the get go. Your child will never notice you’re missing.</p>
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<p>Please be prepared for the possibility that you may not be able to do some of these things. </p>
<p>The dorms – other than the dorm in which the Orientation participants are staying – may not be accessible because they are under repair or in use for summer programs. It’s also possible that your son may not yet have his dorm assignment at the time of Orientation. Some colleges postpone making room assignments for as long as possible because so many students change their housing plans over the summer. Dorm rooms in one building may not be comparable to those in another, so seeing one dorm room may not give you much useful information about a room in another part of the campus. My daughter spent her freshman year in a 150-square-foot single with huge closet space and her sophomore year in a 175-square-foot double that didn’t even have closets – just a small wardrobe for each occupant and dressers shoved under the beds because there was nowhere else to put them. Seeing one of those rooms beforehand would not have helped us pack and plan for her life in the other room. </p>
<p>Also, you may not be allowed to be present when your son is doing his course registration. I certainly was not permitted to be anywhere near the students during this portion of my son’s orientation, even though I was on campus at the time for the parent orientation (and as a result, he ended up in Horribly Difficult Chemistry for Pre-Meds when he only needed A Routine Science Course for People Who Just Need to Fulfill Their Science Requirement).</p>
<p>Your best defense against unfortunate registration results, in my opinion, is for your son – and you, if you are interested – to do as much advance research as possible with the online course catalog and for your son to go into course registration with lists of courses that he does and does not want to take – covering as many contingencies as possible. </p>
<p>Learn from my son’s experience. The reason why he ended up in the inappropriate science course is that he did not think he would take science his first semester and therefore hadn’t even looked at that part of the catalog. But he scored lower on the math placement test than he had expected and therefore did not meet the prerequisites for a computer science course that he had planned to take. The advisor said, “Well, since you have to wait a semester to take that computer science course, why not use the gap in your schedule to get a science general education course out of the way?” My son looked at the available courses and picked the chemistry course because he had liked chemistry in high school – without giving any consideration to the levels of the various science courses on offer. If he had even considered the possibility that he might take science in his first semester, he would have done some research on the science course offerings and would never have ended up in that killer course. </p>
<p>The bank you can deal with. Look for branches on campus – perhaps in the student center – and branches within walking distance of the campus. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a conveniently located bank that also has a branch in your home town. And if your son is not yet 18, you may want to go into the bank and ask about their policies on accounts for underage students. We had some trouble with this issue for my daughter, who turned 18 two weeks before leaving for college. The bank would not give her an account of her own until after her birthday, and there was a wait of up to three weeks for her checks and debit card to arrive. She had to make other arrangements to pay for her books for her first semester, just in case her checks and debit card wouldn’t get to her in time.</p>
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<p>Is he a special needs kid who would benefit from a run-through?</p>
<p>re:registration at Orientation
Both my kids at big state u’s already had part of their course registration done for them by their advising dept. when they got to Orientation. They were already slotted into Eng.,Sci. etc.,basically leaving them to plug in just a couple of classes. However, both kids came home from Orientation got on RMP website, did some research and pretty much redid their whole schedule themselves. So don’t worry about them messing up their schedules. They can always rearrange once back home. At least mine could.</p>
<p>^^^Really? My university let me pick all the courses i wanted to take.</p>
<p>ctyankee - Nope. </p>
<p>Orientation starts at 8:00 am. If he flies up the day before, he’ll have to figure out the shuttle system and then get a hotel room. Since he won’t turn 18 until after orientation, he doesn’t have a credit card, isn’t old enough to rent a car, etc. It just seems easier to fly up with him, pay for the room myself, rent the car myself, and get him over to orientation where he’ll stay on campus for several days. We’ll have time after orientation to scope out how the shuttle works so he’ll know how to use it at Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>The other option is to put him on a red-eye so he arrives in early am the morning of the first day of orientation. Will have to hope the shuttle is running in the middle of the night. Again, just seems easier to go with him, scope out the town for the Walmart, etc., do some touristy things with my DD, and pick DS up for the flight home.</p>
<p>S4 is going to a private college so I’m planning on attending the orientation. Because of the small size of the student population, I figure it might be easier to get contacts with staff for when the inevitable “problems” that will crop up. </p>
<p>W went with S1 for the orientation during the summer before and I took S2 to his orientation but skipped out on the parents portion. S3 went local his first year, so we skipped his.</p>
<p>Go to any parents orientation- when they say anything about orientation, or anything else about the school, they are always referring to the student, never the parents. Time to let go, switch from being in charge, or even included. This means that if they have a parents event it is meant for you and should be of benefit. This also means your child is presumed to be available for his/her events without tag along parents. I found it useful to attend son’s parent program at summer orientation even though I was originally from that area and was an alumnus- things change and there was useful information, as well as an excuse to be back on campus. When move in day came they scheduled dorm house meetings at dinner time so parents were expected to be gone- no taking student out for dinner that day. After so many years of being required to sign forms and be there it is a real paradgm shift- even if your child is under 18 for the whole school year.</p>
<p>We did not go to our son’s orientation. Did not miss anything but the lecture on cutting the apron strings LOL. That said, we did get through the travel to the school complete with 3 airplane changes and a shuttle over to the college when S1 visited for an “overnight” his senior fall so we had already gone through the “parent mental transition” of the travel. If it makes you feel better to go, get him through the travel hurdles and scope out the local resources because you won’t be going to drop him off in August, then I say go along for the orientation trip.</p>
<p>^^^^Dang, where is your son going if you have to go on three airplane changes?</p>
<p>From a teeny tiny town to a teeny, tiny rural town. In the non-winter weather we can drive him 2.5 hours to a large airport and cut one of the plane rides out of the itinerary LOL. We’ll be celebrating in December cause he’ll be 21 and can rent a car for the last leg. I’m really hoping S2 is “closer” although I had to laugh 'cause what colleges does S2 like the most…colleges in teeny, tiny little remote towns.</p>
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<p>Ah, that explains it. Enjoy your visit and I hope your daughter enjoys her time in and around campus.</p>