<p>newmassdad: You can save the sarcasm. I know what a director of undergraduate studies is, and it’s not what I think of as a “departmental advisor”. My daughter has met with the English Department DUS a couple of times, and received no advice whatsoever beyond an explanation of the BA thesis process. The advisor she had first year steered her into a couple of courses that were terrible fits for her, the advisor she had the second year had her plan around a program for which she was rejected (he had told her she would have no problem getting into it). I understand that there are good advisors; my kids haven’t met them. (My son likes the health professions advisor.)</p>
<p>When I was in college, at all times I had a faculty advisor (actually, the first was a chaplain, not a professor, assigned not-quite-at-random to me based on my interests). After my first year, I chose my own advisor, a professor I admired. When I declared a major not in that professor’s department, I was assigned a full professor in the major as my advisor. Each of these people had one to seven advisees, no more; each of them was extremely familiar with and sophisticated about the things in which I was interested; each was someone whom I saw frequently not in his advisor capacity. All course selections had to be signed off on by both the advisor and by a dean who was responsible for about 400 students (and who remained the same all four years for me, and who has been a university president for the past 15 years).</p>
<p>That was a good advising system. </p>
<p>I’m glad Chicago’s system has worked out well for your daughter – and I’ve heard other good stories, too – but I think you would have to admit that, at best, it’s spotty.</p>