<p>I attended the admitted student's session with S. He is now registering for orientation and I was wondering if I can skip the parent orientation (money is really the issue). Is it really important to attend the orientation? What would I miss?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I’m wondering the same thing. It would cost us a lot of money to fly in for two days/hotel/car rental. I think we’re going to skip it. Freshman can go to a one-day orientation right before classes start, from what I can tell on the Web site.</p>
<p>^Don’t skip orientation. You sign up for all your classes and if you go to the one right before school starts, chances are you won’t get all the classes you want and you’ll definitely be getting up early for them.</p>
<p>Parents can skip. Students should not.</p>
<p>Students should go to the normal 2 1/2 day orientation.</p>
<p>Arutha,</p>
<p>There are overlapping topics between Parents’ Orientation and Admitted Student Day, especially the 2+ hours of campus tour. Other topics are unique for Parents’ Orientation, such as school policy, honor system, move-in day, PC / cell phones, etc. If you already have experience as a college-kid patent, you won’t miss too much if you skip the parent orientation. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Student Orientation is very very beneficial. Besides the course registration, students would have opportunity to take placement tests and get free credit hours. I’d recommend to take early Orientation session, since courses (and desirable hours) fill up fast.</p>
<p>My parents didn’t go and I don’t think anyone missed out on anything, especially if you already went to the campus day I wouldn’t have a second thought about skipping it. I was a first gen college student and it still was not an issue that they didn’t go.</p>
<p>Student orientation, however, is extremely important and I would not go to the last minute shorter one if it is at all possible to avoid it.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the input. S is definitely going for the orientation, I was only asking about the parent orientation part. And no, I have no experience as a college-kid parent yet.</p>
<p>Parents’ Orientation is not very useful. Even if you are not familiar with the issues they discuss, you can easily learn more about them on your own.</p>
<p>I attended the admitted students day with my daughter. Both my husband and I also attended orientation. We found orientation very useful, and I felt that much information was shared at orientation which was not shared at the admitted students day. As our child at U Mich is our first child to attend college, we were very glad that we attended orientation. Much has changed since we attended college! It was useful to us to learn more about the school, and the resources available to students. We are from out of state, and we also enjoyed spending time in Ann Arbor and becoming familiar with the area. We were glad that we attended. (Due to scheduling issues, we attended a different orientation then our daughter did). For us, it really was beneficial. I have often referenced the materials which were distributed to us at orientation</p>
<p>I also attended orientation with my D before she was a student. Can you skip it? Yes, but like Beardies, I really got a lot out of it personally. I found the info very useful and enjoyed learning more about how things worked. It also gave me the chance to become more familiar with the campus, which came in handy when my D was lost and would call me for directions. I think my D was also happy to have me there, although you really go your separate ways, I think it just made it easier for her to know I was around.</p>