First Year Programs

Freshman Advising Information

Ways advisers can participate in Freshman A&O Pt. 2. 

The freshman advising session has three main advising components. Review the full schedule for freshman students (U.S. or International) to understand how a student navigates the two - day session.  Review our A&O Calendar to view calendar dates.  

Session  Description 
1. Registration Foundations Mid-size group (30-90 students) session focused on general education.  Most students will meet with OMA&D or UAA Advising if not directly admitted to a cohorted capacity constrained department/school or unit (Honors, Engineering, Business, Allen School, Informatics, Academy/EEP). 
2. Course Registration Small group (10-15 students) session focused on registering for classes.  Most students will meet with OMA&D or UAA Advising if not directly admitted to a cohorted capacity constrained department/school or unit (Honors, Engineering, Business, Allen School, Informatics, Academy/EEP). 
3. Academic Interest Session Large group (100-300 students) session focused on exploring academic interests with live questions and answers from department advisers. UAA Advising coordinates,  and various departmental advisers participate. If you're interested in supporting this session, please contact Kyla Mayer and feel free to sign up for a live session participation. 

Departmental Adviser Participation

If you have first-year students in your open, minimum requirement, or non-cohorted capacity-constrained major, your students will attend presentations with OMA&D or UAA Advising. We invite you to participate in Academic Interest Sessions, and you can email students in your major at any point during the transition process to share information. 

If you need access to our reservation system, please email us at uwao@uw.edu.  

Orientation Leader (OL) Role

OLs will staff all sessions. You can view your assigned OL on the /presenterlist and add the student as an alternate host. OL's can do the following: 

A&O Small Group Advising 

We want to expose students to a wide variety of academic areas and allow students to meet with an adviser in a small group setting and make a connection. Our goal is that every student will leave with a name and contact information of a person they can continue the conversation with throughout their first year. All students are assigned to a UAA, OMA&D, Honors, Engineering, Business, Allen School, Informatics, or Academy/EEP. 

Many students are leaving with a full schedule of courses, and we want to see this number grow. Students say they are influenced to register for a course because of the following factors: