Summer Orientation for Freshmen - Does it make a difference which one you attend..early/middle/late?

twoinanddone · May 2019

Okay, your kids can all take those late Friday classes. I never did and my kids didn't either, 2 flagships and one private school with a lot of labs but none on Fridays for DD#2. She was an athlete and had to travel a lot of Fridays but even when she didn't, she picked the labs at other times.

maya54 · May 2019

We also found the student portal easier to use. Our daughter had no problem with us using it and would from time to time ask us to go to it to get info for her when she’d have a 12 hour clinical shift and wanted say her transcript ordered for a externship application. The school seemed to want you to use the parent portal but had no specific rule prohibiting kids from giving their parents permission to use the student one. We all thought the parent portal was stupid and refused to use it.

wis75 · May 2019

Eons ago, as a chemistry major I ended up with an organic lab (2 credits) that met Friday afternoon for 4 hours (or was it the 4 1/2 hour one?) and again on Saturday morning for the same hours. The only good news was that we could leave our equipment set up because no one else used the lab between our sessions. It was fun doing labs (one reason for the major).

College class registration is so easy now. Son learned quickly how he could change his schedule after orientation. In my day we got the printed Timetable, chose possible schedules and went to one end of a large campus (many hills) to pick up our forms at the appointed time. We then went from building to building (no fun In January) to sign up for each class in its department. I remember telling some poor TA manning the registration table that I needed thus and such section- honors, major- to fit required classes. After going to various buildings we then turned in the form that included departmental okays at the opposite end of campus. Summer orientation was the only time things were streamlined. Of course there were no computers or cell phones at our disposal to help matters. Paging through pages of classes and trying different configurations, strategizing which department to hit first.

momofsenior1 · May 2019

Times sure have changed @wis75! We had a crazy thing called the course exchange in our university's big gym. Basically if you didn't get the courses you wanted (which was almost always), you went to course exchange. It looked like the trading floor of the NYSE with people screaming out what course they wanted to switch into and hoping someone had a match so they could go to the course table together to switch into each other's sections. My now DH found it exhilarating. I found it extremely stressful.

Our D now gets to create her schedule on line, research which profs are best on "ratemyprof," and then when her registration time opens, she just hits "submit". If there is a problem, students can add their names to a waitlist for the class and there are even apps that monitor when seats opens up. Technology has made it a whole lot easier!

TQfromtheU · May 2019

Both my children's schools offer late orientation for those who live further away and set aside classes for each orientation. The benefit to going to the late orientation is reduced travel expenses. DD1 will be flying to orientation /boot camp and the family will drive over with her things a week later when she can move into her actual door room. If she went to an earlier orientation, we would have to drive twice or fly her roundtrip twice. The boot camp is a separate thing she will attend fro her major.

4kids4us · May 2019

@momofsenior1, we had something similar for course selection/changes. That’s how I ended up taking Italian in college. I’d had five years of Spanish before college but still needed at least one class in college IIRC. The line was so long for Spanish. However there was only a handful of kids in the line for Italian classes. Being half Italian, I thought it might be fun. Ended up taking three years of Italian and studied abroad in Rome. That spur of the moment decision ended up having a huge impact on me. Of course, with my Spanish background, I was constantly confusing Italian and Spanish when trying to recall vocabulary words on tests. I remember early on getting a vocabulary test back with the teacher commenting, “This is an Italian class, not Spanish!

To keep on topic, D17 didn’t have orientation ahead of time. Everyone moves in the Friday before Labor Day and the whole weekend was a parent/student orientation. This worked out well for us since her school is across the country-we didn’t have to book more than one trip.

S19 had a choice of dates, all mostly inconvenient as they are during week, end of May, first week of June while my younger kids still have school. Acc to the registration, going to one of the later dates does not have an impact on classes or housing. We are going in the middle.

ProfessorPlum168 · May 2019

haha at Berkeley, the unlucky ones taking the beginning Electrical Engineering course EE16A gets to choose the lab that is the most undesirable which is Friday 5-8pm. My kid gets to have not only a 5pm Friday lecture but a 6pm as well. Luckily both classes are webcasted so it's highly highly unlikely my kid will choose to hook up with Prof Hilfinger Friday evening.

Anyhow back to the original question, at UC-Berkeley, there is only one big 'ol orientation session, and that is only during the week before school starts. Registration actually is the month before, so any advising is done separate from the orientation. I know that at all the other UCs you do get a choice of which week to come in. I guess UC-Berkeley figured that the kids were smart enough to figure out on their own what to register for and didn't want to waste parent's money in making separate trips out.

wis75 · May 2019

My impression is that public U's are most likely to have summer orientation since most students are instate and not traveling long distances. With 6000 entering freshmen it is easier that way. I still remember a family from Boston used their son's summer orientation for a family vacation road trip to the Midwest. Unfortunately their van broke down around Chicago so they got a rental. UW has international students orientation/registration the week before classes start- less travel expense and the visa will have come through.

Aug2019 · May 2019

My S's LAC is holding three summer orientations this summer(June/July) with a fourth in August for Int'l students. We're going to attend the first one since it works best with our summer schedule. Worried though, that since the first one is on a Thurs/Fri., fewer other incoming freshmen may be there? Could be a plus or a drawback.

usma87 · May 2019

@Acadia2023 - I only have experience with two schools, ASU and Notre Dame. At ASU, students sign-up for classes at their orientation. They reserve blocks of classes by major. ASU has over 50,000 students at the Tempe campus. Getting classes is usually not an issue, getting the time and day you want can be the challenge. At Notre Dame, the process involved filling out a "preference sheet" and the First-year Studies advisor put the schedule together. In July (I think) the students receive their schedules. So, at ASU, earlier orientation means more flexibility in scheduling. Notre Dame doesn't really have orientation, its all done online.

The Notre Dame FYS program is changing/going away this year (I believe). So, not sure how scheduling will be done.

Summer Orientation for Freshmen - Does it make a difference which one you attend..early/middle/late?

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