<p>My school has ten orientation sessions during the summer with the earliest being in early June and the latest being one week before classes start. Orientation #9 is for transfer students ONLY whereas orientation #10 is limited for those 700 miles or more away. I am signed up for the first orientation which is all ready booked full… (:</p>
<p>Also, orientation is when you a) meet your adviser and b) register for classes. It’s helpful to go through the online academic courses catalog and pre-choose which classes you’re interested in and go from there… Also, earlier the orientation, better chance you get at <em>special classes</em> like the required Freshman First Year Seminar, etc.</p>
<p>My school offers four orientation sessions (3 days) in June, and then an International/transfer orientation in August three days before the freshmen move in, though non-international students can choose to attend this orientation. This is a private school that attracts students from all over the country, and has a large percentage of international students. At orientation, you meet with your advisor to discuss courses, but do not actually register for them until July (online). You receive your housing assignment before orientation, so I think it’s nice to be able to see your residence hall up close before you have to move in. </p>
<p>Many of my friends orientations are in May, and are causing them to miss a few days of school. Seems a little too early if you ask me.</p>
<p>A little vent. My younger daughters school held summer orientation when she was still abroad during her gap program.We were not aware of the timing when her program was scheduled. As a result( & this is just our experience, a student who was a better advocate/more proactive may not have had this problem), she did not immediately begin courses that would best prepare her for the direction she wanted to take (science/math), and because those courses are part of a sequence it really threw her off and she is now at least one year behind schedule.</p>
<p>If you can’t make summer orientation, hopefully your student is more open to parental guidance than mine was so they are able to hit the ground running in fall.</p>
<p>My daughter will be a freshman at American in the fall, but since she was initially admitted to the Class of '15 and deferred a year, I know that this spring, she will be given the opportunity to register for classes online after a webinar and some email exchanges with an advisor. However, there are also two-day “Eagle Summit” orientation sessions where incoming students can meet their advisors and finalize their schedules. They hold four of them during the summer, plus one make-up session during the Welcome Weeks program in the fall for people who weren’t able to come. </p>
<p>Ironically, although we live 45 minutes from AU, my daughter will be a counselor at an overnight camp in Wisconsin all summer and if she were even permitted to leave for a few days to go to Eagle Summit, we’d have to pay upwards of $300 to fly her back here for it, so she may wind up at the make-up session with, I would imagine, the international students and West Coast kids.</p>
<p>I am hoping that there won’t be real disadvantage in doing that, because she will at least have a tentative schedule of classes she’ll register for this spring. And because she had her AP scores now (she didn’t last spring), her schedule isn’t that likely to change. I think this system seems like a good compromise, although it was strange to me for her to be registering for her college classes while she was still in high school! </p>
<p>When I was a freshman, we arrived on campus and spent a week of orientation before classes started, after which we had a “shopping period” to visit classes that interested us and THEN we registered for classes a few weeks into the term!</p>
<p>I guess I can understand public universities with a large semi-local student body doing this, kind of amazed that colleges drawing students nationwide expect every student to just hop on a plane to fly out for a few days to register and socialize.</p>
<p>midwestmom: a few months before Haverford went coed, I graduated…thank goddess for that lol</p>
<p>I want to emphasize angelmichel’s point about orientation being when registration happens. S1 went to one of the later orientations at his public school. This FOR THE REST OF HIS COLLEGE CAREER put him later in the registration queue for his class. Yes, sophomores get priority over freshmen, etc, but when you have thousands of students in each class, it is a huge disadvantage to have a later registration slot than the rest of your peers. I recommend going as early as possible, even if they “suggest” certain majors as registering later!</p>
<p>To the OP…contact the college. BOTH of our kids were unable to attend the midsummer orientations for different reasons…DD lived on the opposite coast, and DS was away all summer. In both cases, the colleges had an “unpublicized” orientation session right before classes started for those who were unable to attend during the summer but you had to have a GOOD reason…either living a long distance away (we counted because we were over 500 miles away) or a commitment that could not be changed (in our kid’s case it was summerlong music festival he could not leave…and we had to provide documentation for this).</p>
<p>One thing I WOULD suggest…contact the college and find out about course registration. At many schools, this is done at orientation or at least the process for doing so is gone over at orientation. You want your kid to be able to register for classes as early as allowed.</p>
<p>D’s was BEFORE high school graduation! But really, I don’t know how else they could handle it at large public universities. There were some orientations held right before school started for kids who could not come to an earlier one. (And, at her school, seats in freshman classes are held back and released in waves as different orientation groups occur so that it isn’t the case that those with the earliest orientation don’t get all the desirable classes. They also have “cluster” enrollment where you can sign up to be in a cluster of classes (3) with the same group of students, and seats are also held back for those.)</p>
<p>At USC you could possibly do orientation right before fall semester starts with the international students. They also reserve slots in some classes for each orientation session. They open up new slots in certain classes during the second day of each orientation session. This is more for the GE type classes.</p>
<p>OK, I’ve joined you in the way-back machine. The punch cards. The computer printouts taped to the walls with filled sections crossed out. The running from line to line. And inevitably, the 8 am GE held in the furthest out building in a subject area you never ever thought you’d be interested in. Good times.</p>