Advising

If you have inquiries about student academic performance, student excessive absences, student academic planning and/or for any advising related questions, please call (650) 723-2426 or email advising@stanford.edu.

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Advising Overview
Pre-Major Advisor

UAR Professional Advisors

Residences

Sweet Hall

 AARC

Advising Overview

Stanford offers an undergraduate a wealth of intellectual opportunities, both in and outside the classroom. No one path is right or recommended so an advisor's role is to challenge advisees to stretch their minds and question their assumptions. An advisor provides advisees a compass (not a roadmap), encourages them to take intellectual risks, and introduces them to faculty and staff mentors who can serve as additional resources.

It is in the students' best interest to seek advice early and often and our "multiple mentor model" gives students the freedom and flexibility to develop advising relationships that are rewarding and useful to them. Because it is critical that students have guidance from the very start, the university assigns two advisors to the student upon matriculation - The Pre-Major Advisor (faculty or staff volunteer) and the Academic Director (full-time staff).

Pre-Major Advisor

The Pre-Major Advisor, or PMA, is a faculty member, staff person, or local alumnus who has volunteered to take a group of approximately 6 incoming undergraduates under his/her wing until those students declare a major. The PMA holds a required quarterly check-in meeting with each student and can meet with an advisee more frequently if desired. The PMA is matched to students based upon common interests such as advisor's area of disciplinary expertise (broadly defined) or extracurricular interests, and exposes students to his or her department/field of expertise and outside interests. The PMA understands the building blocks and framework for an undergraduate degree regardless of discipline. The PMA guides students in selecting courses within the advisor's milieu or more broadly at the advisor's discretion, but is not expected to understand each major in depth.

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UAR Professional Advisors

Residences

The Academic Director, or AD, is a full-time professional staff advisor with UAR. The AD is part of an undergraduate residential community with an office in the residence, and follows the academic progress of approximately 450 freshmen and sophomores living in a particular residential complex or complexes. The AD stays current on curricular and other academic offerings across the university, regardless of his or her own field, and helps students synthesize a set of academic requirements, opportunities, policies and deadlines so the student can construct a rich and coherent undergraduate experience. ADs also advise students who face difficulty with academic performance/progress, and those who seek an exception from academic deadlines and policies.

Sweet Hall

In addition to the Pre-Major Advisor and the Academic Director, every undergraduate has access to the professional advising staff in Sweet Hall (which includes experts in pre-professional advising, as well as generalists).

AARC

Varsity athletes have access to an additional set of advisors in the Athletic Advising Resource Center (AARC) located in the Arrillaga Center for Sports and Recreation.

 

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