What type of advising were you expecting? Just course selections or beyond? In what ways wasn’t the advisor helpful?
In my freshmen son’s case, he needed some initial guidance with his first semester course selections. He’s a music major but also on pre-med track, so he wanted to make sure that he’s taking appropriate courses that’d meet the requirements for both. His residential college academic advisor wasn’t helpful at all – but not unfriendly – due to his lack of understanding about either music or pre-med requirements. The residential college academic advisor’s background had nothing to do with either subjects, so I can’t blame him for his inability. My son basically ended up talking to upper class friends and figured things out by himself.
UW changed the semester ending from after to before the holidays after my freshman year. I intended to study that first year and it certainly was nicer with the change. They also changed the grading system by adding AB, BC… I don’t want to contemplate what my gpa may have been if that had been in effect my entire time.
Advising usually is major dependent. I doubt many music majors are premed so those advisors will lack experience in which courses to add to their field’s. Outside the box plans will always be more difficult. Plus your son dealt with a different way of assigning advisors- a con for that system, especially for those in less popular majors.
I suspect even the best dining experiences become old after the first months. Even your at home menu repeats itself.
I wouldn’t know about son’s experiences since he was uncommunicative. Even a decade later. Oh, well.
@TiggerDad Doesn’t Princeton have dedicated premed advising? Or was it not for freshmen?
My assigned college advisor was the women’s field hockey coach and PE instructor who was not involved at all in the academic side of the college. We were expected to find our own advisors and weren’t assigned anyone related to our field of study until we asked them if they would be our advisor. I did not start off well freshman year. I went to a tiny selective LAC, too, and I still was assigned the women’s field hockey coach (as a nonathlete). Still burns me up.
“I doubt many music majors are premed so those advisors will lack experience in which courses to add to their field’s.”
In the Princeton University Orchestra, anyway, many are music majors on pre-med track. The orchestra is predominantly composed of Asian-Americans and quite a bit of them are at least on pre-med if not majoring in music per se. So, without the help of his residential advisor, this is where my son’s able to get some guidance from those upper class kids who’s already gone through a year or two before him on the same path.
@1NJParent - “Doesn’t Princeton have dedicated premed advising? Or was it not for freshmen?”
They do and even have an office just for pre-med. I don’t know, however, whether they do help with the course selection, though. I basically have my S find these resources on his own without my interfering in his affairs, personal, academic or social.
Interesting incident. As a semi-professional photographer, I often participate in this major photography discussion forum. About 2 months ago, I posted in this forum some architectural photos that I took while at Princeton for the freshmen move in. This fellow saw the photos and we got into a discussion, and he told me that he works in the pre-med advising office at Princeton! That’s when I found out that Princeton does have a dedicated office for pre-meds.
Part of the growth in college (any college) comes from figuring out solutions to problems without being handheld. It looks as though your son is learning how to deal with his system. I suspect that the premed (an intention, not a major) office does have suggestions about which courses medical schools require, and hopefully how to successfully do them at his school.
The advisor assigned just came to Stanford and didn’t know too much about my kid’s intended major. I am not paying full pay to get advice from someone who is not knowledgeable. My kid tells it like it is because he goes out of his way to work with people around him. So I am going to tell my kid to try to find another advisor.
Princeton advising was terrible when I attended, and had not improved 30 years later when my nieces attended. Good advising can help enormously, as I have seen from one of my kid’s colleges.
@TiggerDad : I have researched Princeton’s premed related stuff. Here is what you need – https://hpa.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/files/2016hpapreparingguide-classof2020.pdf
Also read https://admission.princeton.edu/blogs/10-tips-being-premed-princeton (ignore the old guideline link inside, the 2016 guideline has been updated for 2015 new MCAT)
Someone from UCB, currently at Yale Med School, has posted his application form on YouTube. Quite interesting to read.
Students who know their major should not need much advising, especially if the department puts out a schedule template to follow.
But many students are undecided or are trying to combine multiple goals (e.g. non biology major + pre-med), so they may have more difficulty with the operations research problems of course selection. Also, some paths like pre-med have unobvious thing to know about before choosing courses, even in the first year. Whether to use AP credit to take a more advanced course or repeat it is another situation where better individual advising may help, though it would not be surprising if one size fits all advice we’re common.
Thanks for the links! I’ll forward them to my S.
@TiggerDad : My kid’s school actually has a pre-med session during admitted student weekend. A packet was distributed, which contain all the important information and links to the pre-med website with detail information. At that time, only RD students were allowed to attend the admitted student weekend. I believe the session was repeated during student orientation. The key is to figure out the requirement for committee letter. Here is one example – https://www.brown.edu/academics/college/advising/health-careers/applicants/process As you can see, it is a two-year process which starts with the mandatory Applicant Seminar. Advanced planning is needed.
@ucbalumnus I disagree that there is not a lot to be done in terms of advising. First semester students need to understand the school’s academic policies, advice on whether they should withdraw from a class if overwhelmed, and course selection for most majors is not a case of following a sequence. I had a humanities major. where there were a lot of choices in subfields and concentrations Even though I knew my major, choosing between different concentrations was pretty important and there was a wide range. And choosing electives to meet core requirements involves a bit of sleuthing in terms of which classes will complement the major, etc. If I had had effective advising my first semester, I would have had a minor probably. I had to flail until I took a class taught by a professor willing to take me on as his advisee which is just shooting in the dark.
It seems to me that much of the info in the above post would be part of orientation and not needed in one on one advisor sessions. It is difficult to match students with advisors when the student doesn’t know what to major in. No advisor can tell you which courses on your list you will like best. Not hand holding. Office hours for class issues…
I also disagree that there isn’t much to be done in terms of advising.
. At D1’s school they actually devote an entire day each semester to advising issues. Students met individually with their advisor and these sessions were invaluable. While there was a list of required course for the major, they were not in a straight sequence and the advisor helped her to figure out which classes could be taken in the same semester without a crushing workload.
During advising days, they held panel discussions for undecided students to help them understand the major and also brought in alumni to talk about how their major translated to career options post-graduation>
At D2’s school students actually have 2 advisor. The 1st is a professor within their major and the 2nd one is from another department and just provides a different perspective on the student’s educational path.
My younger kid was shocked by how sheltered many kids were. Some had never been in a classroom with African-American or Hispanic kids, kids from other socio-economic class, kids of different religions, or kids who lived in public housing.
He was also shocked at how much more music (officially three orchestras, three bands, several choirs, and a musical theater program), but also many, many rock bands that played at “coffee houses” on the weekends at the high school or other locations.
The #3 in my older son’s class was shocked that he was just one of the strings in the orchestra at Princeton having been concert master and doing music things every summer. He also got placed into too difficult a math course. Various other issues and he’s still a senior thesis away from graduating. But he basically really lost his confidence.
I’ve known a number of kids who discovered that being good at math in high school is nothing like being good at math in college. My husband is super-smart, but he vividly remembers the math course where he said, okay this is the last math course and he took it pass/fail.
When I was at Harvard exams were after Christmas. They were preceded by a full two week reading period. I liked it and rarely did anything during the winter holiday that was work except catch up on reading in literature courses. I had friends who occasionally had papers due at the beginning of reading period which I thought was really evil, but I never did. I usually had a couple of classes like language classes that met during reading period. When I was in grade school we had finals and final projects due just a couple of days before Christmas and there was no time to do any shopping. At the time my parents were also living overseas, so it was super stressful trying to get packed, get all my shots and everything else as well.
Regarding advising. My SIL still feels her Harvard advisor shouldn’t have let her sign up for four course that were all year-long courses that she couldn’t drop after a semester. (I’m not sure they exist any more thankfully.) She also had three writing heavy courses which was a disaster as she’d never in her life written a paper before.