Summer Orientation Advising

Look below for information on

Changing Your Schedule
Contacting Your Advisor
Transferring Courses from Another School
Determining AP Credit
Preparing for Fall Courses (including purchasing books).

Orientation is just the beginning of what should be a great journey in LSA. Here are some tips for the summer after you leave Orientation and before Fall term begins.

Changing Your Schedule

We're confident that, working with your advisor and academic peer advisor, you've found courses that you're going to love, but it's fine if you want to keep searching for courses this summer and make changes in your schedule. If some of the courses you wanted were closed during your orientation session, keep your eyes on Wolverine Access throughout the summer: students drop and add courses all summer through the first few weeks of classes. Also, some departments add courses and sections as the summer progresses.

Remember that Wolverine Access doesn't provide much information about courses beyond meeting times. For course descriptions and prerequisites and for information about how courses fulfill requirements, you need to use the LSA Course Guide .

If a course is closed, get on the Wolverine Access waitlist. Then attend the first class in the fall and ask the intructor about getting an override that will allow you to register for the course.

If the course has no waitlist, email the instructor to express your interest in the course and politely ask for an override. The instructor's name is usually listed in the course information in Wolverine Access and/or in the description in the LSA Course Guide. You can find instructors' email addresses in the online directory . Most instructors will ask you to attend the first few meetings of the class before giving you the override that will allow you to register. Don't be discouraged that you don't know exactly what you'll be taking this fall: many students don't have a settled schedule until after the first week of a term.

Contacting Your Advisor

Your advisor will give you her/his contact information at Orientation, and it's great if you want to email or talk with your advisor before school begins. If you lost your advisor's email address or forgot her/his name, go to the Advising Center Directory, and you'll find email addresses and pictures.

If you live in or near Ann Arbor, you can make an appointment to see your advisor by calling 734 764-0332. Phone appointments are an option if you're not nearby.

Transferring Courses from Another School

It might be a good idea to contact your instructor if you're contemplating taking a course at another school this summer. Generally, there's no problem transferring courses from a two-year or four-year school as long as the course is in a “traditional” academic area—sociology, astronomy, or philosophy for instance—and not something like pastry making or jet engine repair. While courses from another school will very likely count toward LSA distribution, they won't necessarily fulfill the writing, Race and Ethnicity, Quantitative Reasoning, or language requirements. Also, it's not a good idea to take the beginning of a course sequence at another school, and it's generally not a good idea to do pre-business and pre-med courses at the UofM rather than at another school.

To see how courses transfer from other institutions, you can go to the Transfer Courses (Course Equivalencies) web site. If a course you want to take at another school doesn't appear on this web site, that doesn't mean it won't transfer: all it means is that no one has tried to transfer the course. You can have the course evaluated for transfer by completing a Transfer Credit Evaluation Form and sending it to the Admissions office (see the address below).

Once you've completed courses at another college or university (even UofM-Flint or Dearborn), have the school send your transcript to

Office of Undergraduate Admissions
1220 Student Activities Building
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109.

Determining AP Credit

Go to AP Credit for LSA Students to see the credit you can receive for Advance Placement exam results. By early-to-mid July, your Michigan transcript should reflect how your AP scores translate for Michigan credit. You can find your “Unofficial Transcript” in “Student Business” in Wolverine Access .

If you haven't sent your AP scores to the University, have them sent to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at the address above. Contact your advisor if you have any questions about how your AP scores might affect your Fall schedule.

Preparing for Fall Courses

Most instructors are don't expect you to do any preparing before courses begin other than getting textbooks. UofM instructors usually order their texts through a consortium of bookstores— Michigan Book and Supply , Michigan Union Bookstore , or Ulrich's —or through an independent bookstore, Shaman Drum . The store's web sites have information about buying texts for your courses.

The Mathematics department, however, urges students to prepare for its courses. If you're taking a math course this term, spend some time with the department's Mathematics Preparation web site before the term starts. It will make your transition to college mathematics go much more smoothly.

Also, if you're registered for a language course above the intro level, it would be a good idea to get warmed up because you'll be using the language intensively right from the start of classes. If you know speakers of the language, practice with them. And/or watch a few films or DVDs in the language and pull out your high school texts and do some reviewing.

That's it for now! Have a great summer and see you in September!

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