<p>I’m thinnking of making a college web site scavenger hunt for my D to familiarize her with the resources that are available at her new school this fall and how to find them. Things like “add/drop policy” or “what to do if you are locked out of your dorm” or “what services are available free at the health center.”</p>
<p>In 1-2 sentences what other things should a student be able to access quickly and know where to find? What surprising things has your older student needed to know?</p>
<p>She should know who the Dean of Freshmen is and where the office of residential life is located. (Bonus: she should have the numbers for campus police and a taxi company in her phone.)</p>
<p>Huh?- post #2. What is a "dean of Freshmen? Why would a student need the formal offices of residential life? Most things should be covered in the orientation- college wide and dorm specific. I would learn the name of my RA/Housefellow, the location and phone number to use instead. 99% of students don’t need the above mentioned services. I would learn who my advisor is and office hours of my TA’s and professors. I would learn library locations and hours as well as those of dining areas and unions. I would learn how to look up info for the school- deadlines et al.</p>
<p>Learn where to buy things- pharmacy, books, supplies near campus and how to get to far away places. Learn how to share rides home. Learn about any Sunday church or other religious groups. Knowing when/where/how to use the student health center is a good one. A fun one is locating various near campus eateries.</p>
<p>Finding the easiest ways from one class to another - mapping out possibilities will help. Knowing where safety call boxes on campus are. Google/Bing maps are helpful- then she can see if the reality matches when she gets there.</p>
<p>I don’t think my kids would have received that idea very well… they want to figure that stuff out on their own, and the school usually makes it pretty easy. I did do something to give D1 a boost in finding her way around her college town off campus. Got her a bunch of small gift cards ($10-$20) to things around the town I thought she would enjoy (frozen custard stand, pizza place, movies, bookstore, etc.). Put them in 8 card envelopes with a month written on the front of each and told her to open them on the first day of the month. Wrote a little note in each.</p>
<p>I know I did not really find a lot of the off campus research in my college town (a GREAT town, Ann Arbor) until my junior year… thought it would be good for her to explore earlier. She loved it!</p>
<p>I love the gift card idea. </p>
<p>The problem I see with the scavenger hunt is if she does this freshman year, will she remember junior year when she first needs it. It seems like a lot of time and effort on both sides. Also, both of our older kids had access to the student websites that had more information, and more easily accessible, then the public websites, once they got on campus.</p>
<p>How about a big cheat sheet. What I found hunting through my S’s school website is the are so many links to so many needed things that are tricky to find. </p>
<p>So create a big email sheet with the all links in it and email it to her. Tell her to make a folder for college stuff and put the email in it so she can always pull up that page to find that stuff.</p>
<p>I feel like a parent has too much time on their hands…</p>
<p>Nice idea! How about a list of food delivery places near campus (I know not technically on campus but I know S1 uses them often on weekends.)</p>
<p>wis75, you’d be surprised at how many issues are dealt with by the class Dean or the Dean of Students. The Office of Residential Life is useful for those dorm problems that can’t be solved by an RA (also, it’s usually where you have to turn in your dorm keys at the end of the year, so you may as well figure out where it is).</p>
<p>Sop 14’s Mom–do you really need a scavenger hunt to find that stuff though–I think that is the point they were trying to make. I would HOPE that these kids going off to college are smart enough to look on the school website for information they need, check through the informational folder give to them at orientation with all of that information or simply just ask someone.</p>
<p>The list of required courses for the student’s intended or possible majors, and the prerequisite sequences for those courses. Student should go through the exercise of planning an eight semester schedule to graduate in his/her major; if undecided, s/he should go through the exercise of planning a two to four semester schedule that will allow entering any of the possible majors without delaying graduation.</p>
<p>A student considering skipping courses using AP, IB HL, or A-level credit and taking more advanced courses for which the skipped courses are prerequisites should look for final exams of the courses to be skipped in order to check his/her knowledge of what the college teaches in those courses.</p>
<p>I think it’s a cute idea <em>shrug.</em> Doing all that research is necessary and a LOT of work, I think this would make it a little more fun and I think it may make the information more memorable. I am sure if OP’s D thinks it’s a dumb idea she’ll say so and they can work that out amongst themselves… that’s not what was asked.</p>
<p>There have been some good suggestions so far. Other things to consider are where she’ll go for healthcare if student health is closed, and what kind of services are available for when students are sick-- for example at my school you could arrange to have cafeteria meals boxed for you for a friend to pick up, even though normally you’re not allowed to bring food out of the cafeteria, and there were two student organizations on campus that delivered free hot soup to your dorm if you were sick. Very cool!</p>
<p>Some fun things for her to look up, though she’d have to venture off the college website for them, are what kinds of eateries around town offer late night delivery. She might enjoy that and that’s a good thing to know. :)</p>
<p>It was practically as much work as building a scav hunt to get the info together for my D on what to do in various health situations. We have separate insurances for medical, dental, and RX. When to go to the campus clinic? What if it was off hours, or more serious? Where could she get an RX filled under our plan? What was required to transfer existing RXs? What dentists could she see in an emergency? Ugh. I made up a list of each type of situation, and providers she could use under our plan. Also what changes had to be made each time she came home for the summer/left in the fall (plan notifications required each time she left and came back to our “in plan” area). I put all of it in a manila envelope for her with the actual health plan cards. So I guess you could do that as part of your scav hunt. :)</p>
<p>How about finding out what textbooks are needed for your courses and then looking around on-line to see if they can be had for significantly lower prices than the campus bookstores?</p>
<p>SteveMA–certainly not. My kids would stop speaking to me if I ever tried a stunt like that. But OP asked for types of information useful to a incoming freshman, so I offered my .02, based on my experience both as a parent of a college student and as someone who works at a college.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input so far - my point was not remembering all the info but knowing where to find what you need to know in a hurry if you do have a point of crisis. It would be good to know what the policy is on illness types of things when you aren’t puking your guts out or what type of mental health support was available when you weren’t feeling depressed or worse. There have been all kinds of threads from parents after the fact in crisis so I was trying to get a jump on some of the quirky things that could/have come up. Obviously a kid should be smart enough to navigate a web site, but it helps to know what you’re even looking for. Add/drop is a good one because most HS students just plow through their schedule. There isn’t the choice to change and the responsibility of doing it at the right time and in the right way if you do. </p>
<p>I like the medical information packet. I have been doing that kind of thing this week. What is free on campus. What would be the process under our existing coverage off campus? (hint - out of area you pay up front and submit your own billing) What would be the difference if we changes to our other plan option and how would D deal with copays, receipts, etc? I know some will use the “adults are adults and if they can go to war they can figure out their copays” line. However my student turned 18 last month so is new to this emancipated adult thing and hasn’t done this stuff before. I’m not expecting her to magically have it all down.</p>
<p>A medical packet would be nice, but she’ll figure it out, and she’ll be at a school where they’ll take good care of her if necessary. Cautionary tale:</p>
<p>During registration week my second semester at school, my friends and I went ice skating. I injured my ankle badly, but thought it was sprained. My friends got me back to the dorm (they stole a grocery cart), I waited two days, finally took a bus to Student Health (Madison, WI-- it was far away)-- X rays showed two bones broken, ended up at the Univ Hospital in surgery for screws after two days in pain and an excruciating day of discovery, but I ended up in the right place-- with no help ('cuz I didn’t ask) from dorm staff or my parents, just my sweet dumb boyfriend. I didn’t call my mom til they told me I had to have surgery and then, only then, did I burst into tears! </p>
<p>Moral of the story-- 1)a medical packet or common sense would have speeded things up, but everything worked out in the end. 2) what a maroon!</p>
<p>When I go to our local clinic, they constantly ask about my insurance to determine where to send me for procedures. I would guess the school health clinic would do the same so not sure how you would pre determine some of the needed direction. </p>
<p>If my S was injured, I guess I would expect him to call me to figure out what he should do next.</p>
<p>I think a medical packet with step-by-step instructions is a good idea. The first time any of my children went to the doctor on their own, they didn’t quite know how to handle insurance and paperwork etc. Having a quick guide on hand is sort of like doing a fire drill or teaching a new driver what to do in the case of a fender-bender.</p>
<p>Another fun way to “play” Information Hunt might be a Worst Case Scenario family game - you’ve suddenly discovered that you accidentally registered for Advanced Particle Physics instead of Intro to Ceramics and the semester is halfway over. What do you do? (Could be fun* if you have multiple computers and can play against one another.)</p>
<p>*Yes, it’s true. I do have a warped sense of what “fun” is.</p>
<p>Once a student is on campus, the Web site is not the only – or necessarily the best – portal to useful information.</p>
<p>There will be an RA in the dorm and some sort of academic advising office. The RA is the best place to start for nonacademic issues, and the advising office is the best place for academic ones. For medical issues, you contact the school’s health center (which probably has an off-hours hotline) and go from there. For emergencies, you call 911.</p>
<p>Much will be explained during Orientation, and students will forget most of it. But the RA, the advising office, and the health center will still be there later on, when situations arise where the student does need help. </p>
<p>I would save your energy for when your child moves off-campus or graduates. At that point, students (or former students) is no longer dealing primarily with the university. They’re dealing with the real world. And they may benefit from our experience because we already live in that world.</p>
<p>Besides, if your kid needs help, he/she will contact you. Maybe more often than you would like.</p>