<p>We arrived early on Tuesday afternoon just to get our bearings. If your student has to take a math or language placement test, they will receive a ticket to move in on Thursday since they will be taking that test on Friday while everyone else is moving in. International students, band members and athletes receive a ticket to move in on Wednesday. For some reason our son received a ticket to move in on Wednesday(maybe they consider Montana a different country 
) and the security guard said if we had a ticket " go right ahead and move in", so we did!</p>
<p>Freshman orientation begins Friday late afternoon/evening.
Mandatory activities are interspersed with optional ones . Our son had mandatory meetings at his dorm every evening so we did not see him then. We would meet up during the day to attend presentations on topics he was interested in. He also took naps in our air conditioned hotel room as he was very tired from the evening Frosh-O activities since they went on to about 1:00 am.</p>
<p>If your child is not into big parties and ice breaker activities, prepare him now. Lots of kids enjoy these kinds of gatherings but our son, who is quiet and not into large mixers and crazy games, summed his Frosh-O experience like this: “Why, when you are about to begin one of the most important weeks of your life(first week of college) would you want to begin it being so sleep deprived from the Frosh-O activities?” Unfortunately, the late evening festivities were mandatory. Now after one semester at ND, he says he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.Though he is glad he does not have to do Frosh-O activities next year! :)</p>