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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"Advising here sucks," said the UVA tour guide

I thought maybe the tour guide was just having an off day. 
But I've seen this type of comment in numerous threads here at DCUM, and also at College Confidential.

For those of you who have had direct experience with UVA's advising being "hit or miss" etc, 
what exactly are the issues?

- professors don't spend enough time with the student? 
- the courses are always full? 
- the curriculum is hard to navigate?

Thank you in advance for sharing!

[/quote]

As a parent of a third-year student, I can validate the tour guide’s assessment. Indeed, the University recognizes how spectacularly poor their advisory system is, announcing last year an overhaul of university advising this year. That remains to be seen. Assigned student advisors/professors for first year students are not responsive and often are not even remotely connected to students areas of study—even students in pre-professional areas. A computer science major could easily be assigned a philosophy professor as their adviser. Even by large university standards, UVA comes up short (and it is only mid-sized). Students end up relying instead on on-call associate deans who rotate and don’t know them, though some are good at responding to tactical questions regarding waitlists, add-drop policies/strategies, changing majors, etc. The professor-advisers, by contrast, generally are notoriously unresponsive. My theory is that UVA has gotten away with this not only because of its ranking but because it has a large population of hyper-motivated students who will find ways to press on regardless of unusually poor advising. Make no mistake, there are consequences for students for this shortcoming at UVA, including not discussing with students when it’s appropriate to change majors, change courses, not overload themselves their first year, etc. As a former educator at a large university, I’ve frankly been shocked by what I’ve seen. It is the university’s Achilles heel.

More appalling is that my DS has had undergraduate TAs one grade above him rather than graduate student TAs, including in courses such as computer science. As a former TA myself, I’ve never seen this at a state university. TAs often serve as informal advisors when the rest of the advisory system fails (read: is inaccessible). Doctoral students are in a better position than undergrads to TA (lead discussions and grade) and provide solid informal guidance, as well as to write recommendation letters for study abroad, internships, etc.

If my student was applying today, I would suggest to them that they grill the Dean of Students’ office (not tour guides) on what changes are being made to student advising. Students neither want nor need their hands to be held, but for $70k a yesr (out of state), they are entitled to responsive, sound, and engaged advising, particularly at important junctures of their academic careers.

[/quote]

If this link works, it contains info on the new advisory system.

https://uvamagazine.org/articles/reflections_on_our_university[/quote]

You are a moron. That’s Teresa Sullivan- she hasn’t been president of UVA in years and that article is from 2017/18. If you are bitter about not getting in at least check your sources when you make something up. My DS had fantastic advisers (under the current UVA President, James Ryan, had close relationships with professors snd the Dean of students, far bettter letters of recommendation than I got from my Slac, which got him into Oxford for grad work. AMA[/quote]

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