Some TCU students express a lack of personal connection with academic advisors, especially when it’s time for class selection.

The university requires first and second-year students to attend pre-enrollment advising once every semester to help guide course selection and clarify career plans and goals. With larger majors such as business, students are often put in advising groups where there are multiple students seeking enrollment help from one advisor in the same appointment.

“My advisor has switched three times in the last three semesters, so I always have a new advisor when I go in,” said Britney Haire, sophomore marketing major. “Because of this, there is a lack of a connection.”

Haire has had a new advisor for every pre-enrollment appointment since coming to TCU.

Lida Mesri, a sophomore biology major, has experienced something similar. Pre-health advisors, who are professors in the science department, have limited availability, and their spots fill up quickly. 

“For pre-med advising you don’t get a specific advisor, it’s random every time and it’s based on sign-up,” Mesri said. “I don’t like that because there is no connection, it’s very general and I have to update whichever advisor I have on my course history.”

TCU highlights that the student-advisor relationship is one of shared expectations and responsibilities. But without consistency in TCU’s academic advising methods, many students continually have trouble picking classes for their upcoming semesters. 

Haire feels “like the advising system just doesn’t care, especially being a business student since you are grouped with a bunch of kids. It’s just really impersonal.”

According to the U.S. Department of Education, navigating the academic landscape and future career paths is crucial to a student’s success and advisors play a vital role in the process. Additionally, advisors are meant to simplify and refine students’ academic journey and further careers.

“There is also a lack of specificity regarding which course path I need to be taking,” Mesri said.

Mesri also said she hopes to see a change in the existing academic advising process at TCU in the future.