<p>My son is entering Caltech as a freshman this year and I have pored over the New Student guidebook for some information about activities for the parents of incoming students. </p>
<p>The only two things I saw were:</p>
<ul>
<li>the convocation on Sunday evening 9/17</li>
<li>Parent's Day on 11/4</li>
</ul>
<p>We want to be supportive and involved in our son's education, but we don't live in S.Cal., so it is important for us to buy plane tickets far in advance. Do any parents or students have any suggestions for the most useful times to visit campus during the first year?</p>
<p>Entering freshman have a lot of things on their mind during orientation and rotation, and their time will be spent more valuably learning about Caltech and meeting their fellow techers. So especially if you're of the overprotective sort, I would recommend you only visit during Parent's Day, which is specifically designed for the parents. I'm sure some people will disagree, but that's just my opinion out there.</p>
<p>My husband and I are also trying to figure out travel plans. Do any of you Caltech students on this board have travel times of twelve hours or more? (That's door-to-door, not flight time.) If so, do you generally go home for Thanksgiving or stay at Caltech? Although the official schedule shows only Thursday and Friday as holidays, do professors generally give you Wednesday off, too? If you fly home, is it mostly because your parents want you to, or because you want to? If you stay at school, are there substantial numbers who also stay?</p>
<p>Parent's weekend, around 11/4, is probably the best time. People will be reasonably busy at that time, but it's better than orientation. My parents visited at that time and I thought it was nice, if a little stressful to juggle everything.</p>
<p>I'm from Florida, and the airport I fly from is about an hour away from my house, so travel time tends to be about 9 hours or so door to door. </p>
<p>I went home for Thanksgiving freshman year, didn't do so this year. Going home for less than a week is kind of tough, between the travel time and the time change. </p>
<p>In terms of parents visiting, frosh year my parents came just after Rotation had ended to help with moving in to my actual room. This may have been Parent's weekend, I honestly can't remember. My mom also refuses to go more than 4 months without seeing me (understandably), so my parents visited during the summer last year, and will do so again this summer. (If your son gets an on-campus or JPL SURF for the summer, that means he'll be in California from the end of spring break in March until mid-August.)</p>
<p>We've been wondering the same thing - when to visit..and when do kids bring all their stuff? Is it easier just to come with a small bag with enough clothes for orientation & rotation & then have mom bring "everything" down after rotation when the final room assignments are made? We're in northern California so its not a big trip for us.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback. With our older child, we helped move stuff into the dorm, were available to go shopping for essentials, and were provided with information and tours from the school designed for the parents. (We are not overprotective; we were just available to help when requested).</p>
<p>At Caltech, I understand that the frosh don't have their final room assignments until after rotation (by the way, how are rooms and roommates determined?), so the first two tasks are probably not applicable. Based on your responses, it seems that the third item -- parent "orientation" -- is not until Parent Day in November.</p>
<p>Based on your experiences (especially silverdrake), would it make sense for us to stay at home during orientation/rotation, and then come out right after rotation ends to help him move in? Or is it rare to have parents there after classes have started? We really don't have a problem letting him do it alone, but we also don't want to leave him high and dry if he could use some help.</p>
<p>By the way, when will rotation end this year? </p>
<p>I'd say definately stay home during orientation/rotation. Frosh are pretty busy and bombarded with information during that time, and don't really need more than for a 2-week trip of some sort (clothing and so forth). What my family did was ship up my clothing and other stuff from home so it was there when I arrived (housing has some information about the proper way to do that), and I lived out of the suitcases until I got a permanent room assignment after rotation. When my parents came up after rotation was over, that's when they bought me things like desk lamps and whatever else I needed to move in.</p>
<p>I don't recall exactly how many parents did this, but it's certainly not unheard of. It worked far better for me than having all the furniture and accessories in one room for a week or so and then having to move it.</p>
<p>We thought about going after rotation to help with the move in but figured that a visit at that time could be pretty disruptive. </p>
<p>Since we are also from the east coast, the plan is to ship the heavier stuff prior to departure, take the essentials on the plane, and ship the rest after rotation from home or directly from the store. </p>
<p>We are not planning a visit until Parent's weekend, and we are holding off on Thanksgiving plans. It is so close to end of quarter that it might be a hard trip to make. :(</p>
<p>I flew out with S for orientation, but there was little I could do. He was assigned a temporary room. He packed a small bag that he used for a week, including taking it to the retreat.
I did enjoy parents' weekend. T-day I flew out, as it was 1/2 the price of him flying east. Its such a short time, and airports are so busy. They have T-day dinner for kids that stay on campus.</p>
<p>My family's tentative plan is to drive my car down without enough for the first 2 weeks, and then drive our surburban down at the end of rotation to drop of the rest of my stuff (I'm packing both cars before I leave, we figured that would be better). I don't know if that helps anyone, though..</p>
<p>I think we will fly out a few days before orientation starts and do some shopping and touring around Pasadena with our son. Then when he leaves for the camp, we'll go home. We'll come back for Parent's Day, and then see him again when he returns for Christmas break.</p>
<p>Is there any chance he will want to stay for a couple of days after finals are over on December 8? Or do most freshmen get out of town right after finals?</p>
<p>Thanksgiving: Some professors give Wednesday off, some don't. I go home every year, and I often plan on skipping my Wednesday class to extend the break -- it's usually not a problem.</p>
<p>Winter Break: Most frosh leave campus sometime during the weekend after finals. If you stay till Monday, you're one of the last people to leave, but if you leave on Friday you're one of the first. </p>
<p>Visiting: My family has only come out to visit once, and they did over New Years so that we could see the Rose Parade.</p>
<p>Someone asked a little while ago how room/roommate picks work. The first week of classes is rotation. For rotation (and the week before), all the frosh are assigned temporary rooms and roommates. During rotation, they visit each house for lunch and dinner. The houses also have receptions after dinner and you're encouraged to stay and meet as many upperclassmen as possible, in order to get a feel for the house and to let the house get a feel for you. At the end of the week, you rate 5 of the houses on a scale of 1 to 10. You will not be placed in a house you do not rate, so you can exclude your three least favorite houses. You're told your new house the day after you turn in your ratings, and you usually move into your house about 2 or 3 days later. This is where it diverges based on house -- about half the houses will give you a temporary room which you'll live in for about three days until roompicks. This gives you time to meet people and choose your roommate. The other half of houses will choose rooms (and roommates) before you move into the house. The south hovses will probably have two sets of roompicks this year, since they move from the mods back into the hovses for second term.</p>