You have accepted McMaster. w00t! You are now going where such prestigious alumni as Howard P. Whidden (he liked to ski), Ivan Reitman (director of Ghostbusters and producer of Animal House),
There are a few things you need to start doing now that you are on your way to being a McMaster student...that is of course assuming you do not have your offer revoked due to a drop in your grades. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Once the university has gotten your final grades from high school, you will get your final letter of acceptance. It is only until you have gotten this letter that are you actually considered a McMaster student.
In the meantime, there are a few things you can do to facilitate the new student process now. Some of them seem a little bit stupid to do right away, but in the end you’ll be glad you did them when I told you.
If you are planning on living in residence, you have slightly less than two weeks to fill out your application form and send in your deposit. The due date is May 28th at 4pm. Any later than that and you have missed the deadline, and Housing and Conference Services will not do anything no matter what excuse you give them. Remember when you are ranking your choices to consider the cost of your accommodations, as you will be paying anywhere between $3805 and $6110 in addition to the cost of your mandatory meal plan. And if you have at least a 78% average, you are guaranteed a spot in residence...but that doesn’t mean you’re going to avoid a triple occupancy room.
Once you have gotten your residence application sent in, set up your MAC ID. You will need this to pick your courses (Your faculty will begin sometime between June 30 and July 4th as per the Office of the Registrar’s website. The closer to the course selection days you are, the more likely you will not be able to access the site as it will crash. Too much traffic makes the McMaster server crash. It’s really irritating, but if you take steps to avoid it you will not have to deal with the frustration.
Will you need some sort of financial assistance in first year? If so, consult with the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). Find out your eligibility, and begin the application process. There are some scholarships and grants that you must apply for before a certain date. To have OSAP as a payment agreement when picking courses you must have applied by a certain date as well. Danny Vacar wrote an excellent article about OSAP in early May, and it is a worthwhile read if you are considering applying. And I suppose you could go to the main OSAP website if you wanted more information too.
If you have concerns about picking your courses, the First Year Experience Office (FYEO) is offering an orientation program focused on academics. The Easy Summer Orientation Program (ESOP) has sessions on academic success, goal-setting, decision-making, and an inspirational video. You can read up about the program and find out what days it is offered by checking out the FYEO website. These sessions run between the second and seventeenth of July.
However, the previously-mentioned sessions are not mandatory. If you want to find out what day your faculty picks courses, you can go to the Office of the Registrar’s website. Remember, if your MAC ID is not functioning you cannot pick your courses. This means the section or sections you may want to be placed in by the time you are able to access SOLAR. Last summer, Chad wrote an article about picking courses that you should check out. What he addresses in Class Selection Tips and Help is an incredibly valuable article, so you really should read it. Even if you went to the FYEO sessions, or on planning on attending them it is full of useful information.
If you are having issues, or have questions about courses, please post on the forums. Since this is a site run for students and by students, your peers will be able to help you with the process. And you may even meet some of your future classmates along the way. We just ask if your question is different than ones previously asked to post a new thread, rather than making existing ones super long.
If you breezed through the process really quickly, and have developed some tips you think may be worthwhile please contact Chad (chadfullerton [at] gmail.com) or myself (danielle.lorenz [at] gmail.com) via email, Facebook or Private Message. Then between the two or three of us, hopefully we can get a new article up...and by you! We encourage all students to write for us, even incoming students!
High school is over for you now, so get off your butt and get a job if you haven’t already! University can be expensive so start squirreling away money now!
In July, you will receive more information from the school in the mail. This obviously will have occurred once the McMaster has gotten all of your final grades. You will be getting a mixture of publications, info sheets and other tree-killing things. Make sure you read every single page you get, as they are included for a reason. If you find some of the information not useful, recycle it.
In this package you will get literature on your MacPass, your all-access pass to Welcome Week at McMaster. There are some items during Welcome Week you can only get into with your MacPass wrist band. Currently, at posting time the exact price of the MacPass is still to be determined. However, there is a motion to make it much cheaper than the $130/140 dollars from 2007. I wrote an article about the MacPass last year, and with the exception of cost, most parts seem to be the same. However, we will be writing an updated article for this summer once we get more information.
In late Julyish, your residence acceptance is supposed to become available. Last year there was a glitch in the system, so the information came out a day later than it was originally supposed to. Last year was also the first year the information was available online; previously you had to sit by your mailbox and wait. Once you find out what residence you are living in, consult with our Residence Survival Guides, Parts One, One and a Half, Two, Three, Four, and Five . Also, read Getting Involved at McMaster Part Six: Residence. Each of these articles should give you some idea of what you should be thinking of in terms of residence.
If you are getting OSAP you will need some sort of photo identification to pick it up. Make sure you have a driver’s license or some other form of photo ID in the mail long before mid-August or you may not be able to pick it up as early as you would like.
Friday August 8th is Welcome Day! You should attend if at all possible. There are many different programs and sessions happening on that day, and they cover all avenues about student life. If you are living in residence, you will also be allowed to see a few examples of residence rooms in your res (but not your specific room). More information about the day’s schedule will be posted on the FYEO website closer to the day.
If you aren’t doing anything from August 15th – 17th, come to the Horizons leadership conference! It is a way for you to meet your incoming classmates, stay in a McMaster residence building, get familiar with the McMaster campus, and experience the fun of Welcome Week two weeks before it starts. For more information on the applications and application process, check out the Horizons website.
Spend the latter part of August packing, posting on our forums (what? I’m allowed to self-promote!), and sleeping. You don’t get a lot of sleep during Welcome Week, so I suggest you start banking as much as possible beforehand. Welcome Week officially starts on Saturday August 30th at 8AM, so enjoy your last little bit of time before adulthood starts.
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