Before you come
Finish the pre-orientation checklist: activate your Porter account and email, complete placement (math, and language or writing where required), submit final transcripts and immunization records, and review the online campus introduction. Doing these before orientation means the day is spent on advising and registration instead of paperwork.
Meeting your adviser
A core piece of orientation is a session with an academic adviser — individually or in a small group — where you learn how your program works, what first-term courses make sense, and how the degree is structured. Come with your placement results and any AP, IB, or transfer credit so the adviser can plan around it.
Registering for classes
You register for your first term during orientation, with adviser guidance. It will not be a perfect schedule — you are choosing from what is open to incoming students — and that is fine; the first week has an add/drop window to adjust. Have a couple of alternates in mind.
The information sessions
Financial aid and billing, safety and Title IX, housing and dining, technology setup and your issued laptop, student involvement, and campus resources. Some are required. Take notes on the deadlines — the tuition due date, the housing steps, the aid to-do list — because they come fast once the term starts.
The social side
Orientation groups you with other incoming students, often by college. These are not your permanent friends, but they are familiar faces in week one, which matters more than it sounds. Go to the optional social events; the org fair preview and the campus tour are worth your time.
The family track
Supporters attend parallel sessions on the transition, privacy law, billing, safety, health, and helping a student use campus resources without doing it for them. Students and families split up for most of the day and reconvene at the end.
After orientation
You leave with a class schedule, an adviser, a to-do list, and a move-in date. Work the to-do list before classes start — the students who arrive with the aid, housing, and account steps done have a much smoother first week.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.