<p>How important are the advising groups? My son thinks he may have misread the form and put down the wrong choices. If he were to get his first choice, in addition to not being the activity he wanted (he didn’t read that the poker was for novice players only), the advisor would be in the one department he really had no interest in - Bio. He tried to send an email to fix it, but he was too late. They said it really doens’t matter, but it sounds pretty important to me.</p>
<p>One of the Mudder students can weigh in, but from a Mom’s persepective, the advising group didn’t seem very important. It seemed more of a way to have a ready made group/resource person to help navigate the first week or so than anything else.</p>
<p>Agree. The way we read it, advising groups are just for having a specific friendly face to help get settled in. The advisor isn’t a permanent academic advisor; that will come later.</p>
<p>Anyway, if he gets his first choice, he might find that other students in his group didn’t read the “novice” part either… or he might turn a nice little profit in his first week. :D</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter a whole lot. Most advising groups only meet once - at the beginning of the year. My group met again several times because our purpose was to see musicals, and there was nothing interesting going on during orientation week, but most of my friends never met with their advising group again unless they were in one of the for credit groups. Even with the extra meetings, my group didn’t really bond as a whole.</p>
<p>Since the freshman schedule is mostly determined by core, the freshman adviser doesn’t really matter that much. My freshman adviser was a math professor, and even though I’m almost certainly going into CS everything went just fine. He basically made sure that I wasn’t doing anything stupid with my schedule and asked questions about classes that were out of the ordinary (which resulted in him giving me a copy of one his books in German…apparently he had several German copies that he didn’t know what to do with!). Then again, I had made most of my scheduling decisions by talking to upperclassmen before my advising meeting, so I didn’t have any tough questions to ask him.</p>
<p>If your son doesn’t feel that his adviser is helpful, he can always talk to a professor that he thinks will be. Professors aren’t limited to speaking only to their advisees, and most are pretty approachable (although if he waits until the final scheduling week, then he will be out of luck since every prof is completely booked with advising meetings).</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. The musical theater group is the one my son really wants, by the way. I’m still a bit confused about what the advisor from the advisor group does and for how long. Is this your academic advisor for the first year? First semster? Or only orientation? If it’s just really an orientation week thing, it is probalby no big deal, but if it it the person who he is supposed to go to for academic advising for his first year, that might be more of an issue. Bio is just pretty far removed from what he is interested in, bu I’m glad no one thinks it is a big deal.</p>
<p>In the past they were not your academic advisor…but I’m not sure about now. (I only talked to my freshman advisor a few times)</p>
<p>They are DEFINITELY NOT your major advisor.</p>
<p>They are your academic advisor (why does Firefox think I’m spelling this wrong?) for at least your freshman year, and as far as I’m aware, until you officially declare your major. But like I said, it really isn’t that big of a deal. Your son will mostly be taking core classes, so there aren’t too many big major related issues to deal with. If your son knows what major he’s interested in, then the class options are pretty clear-cut, and if he hasn’t decided yet all of the advisors have enough wisdom to help him make a good choice. And if he really needs major related advice, he can talk to someone from that department.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is unlikely that your son will end up in the musical theatre group if he misread his form. There were a lot of people who would have liked to be in the group, but rated another group equally high and ended up with that one. I think it might have something to do with having our most famous professor as the advisor 
The good news is, not being an official member of the musical group won’t keep your son from going on the theater trips! If he emails Prof. Benjamin at the beginning of the year telling him that he would be interested in going on the trips, he’ll get added to the email list. I think only 50% of the people who went to Avenue Q were officially part of the advising group. Considering this, I actually think its kind of an advantage to be part of one of the other groups. You get to meet new people and have fun doing something besides listening to random musical songs during orientation (nothing wrong with that, but I would have much rather been playing bored games if I had known), and you get all the perks of being in the group!</p>