Deciding on a career can be a daunting task for a student, especially for one who doesn’t have any idea as to what they want to do. Many of these undecided students turn to First Year College, a program designed to help students make the transition into a major. Because “First Year” is part of the acronym, some might think the program applies only to the freshmen; this is not the case.
“Just this semester one of my professors was going over the roll and he said ‘Is it possible to be a junior in FYC?'” John Wolfe, a junior in FYC, said.
According to Carrie McLean, the director of FYC, there are currently 41 juniors and 5 seniors out of the nearly 1,000 students in the college.
“My goal is to move people out of First Year College,” McLean said. “We’re not creating First Year College students, we’re making N.C. State graduates.”
She said there are several reasons students remain in FYC for more than a year. If a person doesn’t do well their first semester it may take them longer to recover their GPA. She also said intratransfer GPA requirements have increased for several colleges. Despite these setbacks, 76 percent of students do transfer out of the program after their first year.
McLean said she agrees that increasing GPA requirements is not fair to those students who initially thought the requirements would be lower. She said she has brought this issue to the attention of the intratransfer committee and it is currently being reviewed.
Wolfe knows this story all too well. As a college freshman he enjoyed the freedoms of college a little too much his first semester and finished with a GPA in the low 2’s. He said it has been hard road to recovery, especially since GPA requirements have increased for both the College of Management and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, two colleges of interest for him.
“Staying in First Year College doesn’t have to do with laziness, it’s just that some people don’t know what they want to do,” said Connor Reside, a junior who transferred out of FYC this past December into biological sciences. “They may have a career in mind but they can’t put two and two together.”
However, some upperclassmen such as Reside may stay for different reasons other than GPA setbacks. He said he has always maintained a good GPA and always knew he wanted to go into biological sciences but wanted to delay transferring as long as he could.
McLean said the FYC program is not designed for those students who already know what they want to major in but rather for students who are truly undecided or may have not definitively decided.
She knows some students may use FYC as a back-door entrance into the University, but said the program is not created for less qualified students. According to her statistics, the average SAT score for the 2006-2007 incoming freshman class was a 1200 with a weighted 4.0 GPA.
FYC students who enter the University as freshman are required to take two courses, Introduction to University Education I in the fall and Introduction to University Education II in the spring. These courses include assignments such as personality assessments and poster demonstrations that discuss majors in each college. The program also requires attendance at mandatory panels in which students listen to different representatives from each college who talk about the majors they offer.
However, for Wolfe and Reside, the personality assessments were not helpful.
“They told you what you already knew about yourself,” Reside said.
While the curriculum may have room for improvement, according to Reside, he said that FYC students need to take personal responsibility. He said program administrators do encourage students to talk to other students in different majors and use University resources.
“They cram the Career Center down your throat,” Reside said. “It’s not their job to tell you what to do with your life.”
After the first year, students who remain in the program no longer have to take FYC classes. For Wolfe, administrators stopped being helpful after his freshman year.
“If I had to do it over again I would have rather thrown a dart at the board [to pick a major] and picked from there,” he said. “I’d rather be in Women’s Studies than First Year College.”
McLean said FYC prides itself on building personal relationships with their students. She said she believes the students develop closer relationships with their advisors than perhaps other colleges.
“It’s not an 8 to 5 job,” said McLean, who often works after-hours and weekends along with her staff. “We put students in leadership positions who might not have much confidence.”
