Every uni I have worked at is difficult about transfering in credit. There are good reasons for this. Perhaps this is what she means.
I guess I lucked out…when I tried to meet with an advisor (meaning they would not let me make an appointment and several people were waiting outside his office :rolleyes:) the head of my department (film) happened to be in the building and asked me if I needed anything. I told him I was hoping to get some advising, and he took me into his office and spent an hour with me going over my DARS and writing out everything I needed. Was VERY helpful! I look forward to taking a class with him this coming term.
He even concurred with my plan to not pursue 1st yr French after the class I was taking that term, but to do home-study until I could pass the one upper level course I need to graduate. If he were interested in racking up money for the University, encouraging me to keep taking French even though the credits wouldn’t count towards my degree would have been a perfect strategy.
As many have said, it really depends on the advisor you get. And in my experience, at least at my school, they really go out of their way to help you get what you need with as little waste of time and funding as possible. I am a transfer student and older, but I’ve never found I was treated any worse than anyone else.
My experience with advisors was always just the bare minimum required to register online for classes. I read through the entire book of policies and such before ever taking my first class, and kept up with Word and Excel documents detailing which classes I needed to take when in order to graduate on time, and any changes in major or to those plans I figured out myself. Trips to the advisor were “Hey, these are what classes and times I want to take them next semester.”
I loooved trying to figure out my schedule every semester.
I actually tend to agree. The problem is that the institution is set up not to care whether you are ready or not. Scholarships and grants are hard as heck to get if you aren’t going straight after high school. Yet, in my experience, less than half the people I knew in college were ready to pick what they wanted to do. And half of those who did know found out they made mistake and had to change.
My own problem in college was that I didn’t game the system. I took hard classes because I wanted to learn, rather than easy ones to help keep my GPA up so I wouldn’t lose my scholarship. I didn’t realize that the transition to living alone was going to affect me as much as it did. I needed school to be relatively easy as I got used to the new social environment.
To my mind, it’s an argument for distribution requirements or core classes. Everybody meets criteria (e.g., 2 science classes, 2 humanities classes, etc.) and is able to pick from a number of identified courses to meet them. Majors clearly identify any specific core and pre-major requirements. Programs post progression and graduation requirements. Everyone gets exposed to every broad discipline, with majors/programs pointing wannabes toward recommended ways of meeting those requirements. Advisors help people who are having trouble meeting requirements because of transferring, changing majors, bombing a core course, taking time off, studying at another school for a term, having a learning disability, etc. They may also provide major/career counseling if the school doesn’t have career services.
I find this incredibly hard to believe. The college where I work would much rather graduate students and bring in new ones than keep our students around longer than they really need to be there. If a student attempts too many total hours, we actually end up losing money on them because we don’t raise tuition, but the state stops subsidizing them.