Advisors play a major role in a college student’s experience. As a transfer student, I have had both positive and negative experiences with advisors.
Students need advisors to help them decide classes and to ensure they are still on track—or else there is a possibility that something may go awry.
An experience in my personal past showed this exact situation. During my time at community college, I was constantly meeting with advisors to ensure I was on the correct path.
Graduation came and went, sending me on my merry way to transfer to a four-year college. Once I began applying at Saint Xavier University—I was told that my credits were not up to par.
I was a single credit off, as a class I took ended up not counting for credit outside of my community college. Due to this, I had to either repeat my sophomore year at SXU, or go back to my previous college to garner more credits.
While I was able to get those final credits—it unfortunately delayed my journey and held me back a full year from being able to transfer. This type of delay can seriously harm someone as college definitely isn’t cheap.
My experience is not the only one out there, as advisors are stretched so thin. Having to handle so many students is definitely not an easy job.
Trying to keep up with a multitude of schedules is no easy task and students are bound to fall between the lines—which is so dangerous. As with what happened to me, delays can truly harm a student’s progress.
We are all trying to achieve the credits we need whilst creating a maintainable workload, so it can be easy for a student to get mixed up.
While the progress bar is able to be viewed by students, sometimes another pair of eyes is needed to ensure everything is up to par.
The tightrope walk of gathering credits to graduation is so thin, any mistake can set a student back in their journey.
This is why it is vital for advisors and students to have more consistent meetings. Whether it be on zoom or in person—meetings should be enacted to ensure every student gets the attention deserved.
If this scenario is deemed too excessive—then perhaps it should be mandatory for an advisor to evaluate a student’s standing at the end of each semester—even just to give a quick lookover.
This would allow for any mistakes to be caught right when they are made—-rather than when it is too late. If or when a mistake is noticed, then the advisor can contact the students to help change the tide.
College is such an important time in our lives, and while students need to be responsible for looking over their work—advisors should help them along the way.
Nobody is perfect, and expecting students and advisors to never make a mistake is foolish. However, if the two worked together more closely—then these errors would become further and far between.
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