<p>My daughter, also, got an advisor that was not very good at advising. She said he looks like he works out a lot and he was mostly interested in talking to the other athletic looking guys in her advising group. Apparently he didn’t mention anything about classes. She was disappointed. </p>
<p>Sadly, he is from the department that she’s interested in, so, on paper, it is a good advising match-up. I’ll suggest to her that she try to talk to someone else there, too, to see if she can get some guidance.</p>
<p>bookmobile, I wouldn’t worry too much about the freshman advisor. Once they become sophomores, at least for MCDB, they have to choose an advisor in that department. My son’s freshman advisor wasn’t in his department at all but he did provide my son a great summer research opportunity. He is selecting a new advisor for this year who will guide him through the last three years. Their thought process may be that many students change majors after freshman year so it is not critical to have one in the student’s area right off the bat.</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt from the Biology handbook you may find useful:</p>
<p>If the freshman advisor is not a member of a science department in Yale College, the student is strongly advised to consult with the director of undergraduate studies in the field of the student’s primary interest. There are also meetings for prospective science majors that are held in the fall before classes get started.</p>
<p>Lastly, here is the primary responsibility of the faculty advisor freshman year:</p>
<p>This faculty advisor is responsible for advising the student about fulfilling distributional requirements in the first year.</p>
<p>In other words, they are to make sure the student fulfills the requirements to reach sophomore standing.</p>
<p>At the end of freshman year (after 2 terms of enrollment), enrollment for one course credit in two of the three required skills categories: QR, WR, and foreign language.</p>
<p>Thank you, Kdog. My son did speak to someone at the academic fair today and I will encourage him to keep being proactive. I still think it’s a shame to get a non-academic administrator as an academic advisor, though. I will hope he identifies someone more appropriate to guide him for future years. He was really hoping for a good summer experience, so he’ll have to look hard elsewhere for someone to advise him on that too, I guess. He did not get into the PSE program.</p>
<p>I just tried to order some text books on Amazon using the Student Prime account that we set up for our S and Amazon will not ship it “two day” if I use the dual address method as recommended above in the message board since Amazon will not ship “two day” to a PO Box.
Anyone elase have this issue. Should I just use the RC name and not include the PO Box but I can’t tell if Amazon will ship via UPS or USPS?</p>
<p>dadinsacto, you cant have the word PO Box anywhere in the address. You need to use the # sign before the PO BOX number.</p>
<p>Student name
206 Elm Street #123456 [your student’s box # goes here, but don’t put the words “PO BOX” or even “Box” before the # sign]
New Haven, CT 06511</p>
<p>dadinsacto, make sure that your S fills out the appropriate form at the Yale PO. I don’t know the name of the form, but he should go there and tell them that he wants to fill out the form that allows him to receive UPS and FedEx deliveries there.</p>
<p>Also, some websites won’t even allow you to put in the # sign in the address (which seems crazy, because people do that for apt #'s all the time). In that case, I just skipped the # sign entirely before the box # and it seemed to work.</p>
<p>Maybe this was just our experience, but the guy at the PO seemed to be pretty adamant about mentioning that you “should always use USPS whenever possible,” when he gave my D the form. Trying to save the postal system, I guess? Anyway, we did a lot of nodding and saying “Of course, of course, USPS is best. But what can you do, some companies won’t ship that way? Tsk, tsk.” Just mentioning it in case they seem reluctant to find the form for your S.</p>
<p>I also want to add my heartfelt thanks to all the more experienced Yale parents on this thread. Your words of advice really helped my family with what to expect, what to do, and what to skip during move-in.</p>
<p>Very sorry to hear that only freshman were getting fed. That does seem odd. Anybody know what the point of that was?</p>
<p>^Although the dorms opened up a week before classes began for upperclassmen, I’ll assume they did not really need to be there so Yale thought it had less of an obligation to feed them. Freshman had mandatory orientation sessions and were fed because early attendance was required. Considering how many fewer meals my kid eats than the full meal plan allows, it does seem stingy to open the dining halls so late.</p>
<p>My daughter arrived Sunday (since we were driving her, it had to be a weekend). She was the last of her suite mates to arrive, and there were required things for some of them before Tuesday (placement exams as I recall). No meals until Tuesday <em>is</em> stingy. Some restaurants in the area gave a 10% discount with Yale ID. I agree it would have been nice to feed them earlier; it’s a lot to expect someone to show up just the day before classes to get moved in, etc.</p>
<p>^^ I agree that it’s stingy, but all colleges seem to be squeezing profits by cutting meal plans these days. My daughter, who is at another school, does not get a hot breakfast Monday through Friday – no eggs, oatmeal, pancakes, bacon, waffles etc. Her options are fruit, yogurt, bagels, toast, coffee or tea. And for that, we pay more than Yale (ugh)!</p>
<p>I remember being bothered by how quickly Yale shut down dining halls and how late they reopened them after breaks since they have students who travel long distances and could use breakfast the day of travel or a convenient meal when they return after twelve hours of travel. No one wants to go foraging for food after traveling all day.</p>
<p>Gibb, funny you mentioned that in post #2073. That was the first thing our kid told us after attending admitted students day at that school lol.</p>
<p>Since the dining halls are open for freshmen anyway, they could charge upperclassmen something, whatever it would cost to not incur a loss, and the upperclassmen would at least have access to non fast-food options. Why should the restaurants in the area make the money off the kids, when the U could?</p>
<p>The dining halls were only sort of open for freshmen. They were required to move in on Friday, yet there was no dinner on Friday or breakfast on Saturday (at least according to my daughter’s froco). It is a lot to ask of a freshman to go out and find food on that Saturday morning. They don’t know the area and they are also dressing for an assembly. Since they knew the freshmen would be there, would it have killed them to have even just a continental breakfast on Saturday morning?</p>
<p>bookmobile – D’s faculty advisor hasn’t made it to campus yet. There was a group session with the RC Dean and wasn’t terribly helpful. Apparently she’ll get an individual meeting at the end of the week. We’ve been doing a fair amount of advising by email.</p>
<p>I recall that last year the dining halls weren’t open except for the parent lunch on Saturday after convocation…
and so the first meals were I think Monday…yet because of the hurricane they sent them with bag lunches back to the dorms.
I think we didn’t realize the trouble that caused. I do think Yale doesn’t do a good job with noting the meal/dining plan etc and timing of it to freshmen…</p>
<p>because of the lack of dining last year–I mentioend it to K1 who looked it up the night before flying back to school. </p>
<p>As I posted that link–the dining halls were open on Tuesday - and it looks like for all meals …k1 said the dining halls for dinner were freshman only and there was a bbq on old campus for upper classmen</p>
<p>While there are tons of places for the kids to eat from G’heavan, etc on Braodway, Ivy Noodle , etc etc… The dining fees are high so I think feeding them from at least Sunday onward is fair–because by then the families of freshmen are long gone and the upper classmen have been there a 5 days or so (+/-) They could even have lunch/dinner only for upper classmen and abbreviated hours at say Stiles/Morse so there is somewhere for them to go…say Fri/Sat/Sun.</p>
</p>