Undergraduate Orientation

Welcome to the JSOM Orientation Page!

We hope you are as excited to begin your college experience with us as we are excited to meet you. Your orientation is essential to learning how to be a college student at UT Dallas. During your in-person or virtual orientation sessions, you will learn about general student policies and procedures and be acclimated to the unique idiosyncrasies and vocabulary of UT Dallas and JSOM.

Your JSOM-specific session will teach you how to be a successful JSOM student, the role of different staff and faculty, and what you can look forward to during your first semester and beyond.

The information provided in the “Transfer Students” and “First-year Students” section below will assist you with preparing for your orientation. In addition to this information and helpful links, we are providing you with an Orientation Handbook (available to download through Box) which has useful documents like the Academic Calendar, a list of Program staff and faculty, a JSOM degree flowchart, and more.

If you have any questions about anything you read (or don’t read) below, please reach out to us as soon as possible at jsomug@utdallas.edu. If you wait until the day before your orientation, it may be too late to do what is necessary to address your issues. We look forward to seeing you at your orientation!

Degree plan

The most important document for incoming transfer students is the Degree Plan that the JSOM Academic Advising office creates for you. This plan lists your transferrable courses and how they apply to your specific degree plan. There are two views: Semester and Advisor.

The Semester view is based on the four-year (eight-semester) plan we give to incoming first-year students which lists the five recommended courses they should take each semester. The ordering of courses is based on prerequisites and the general timeline of requirements like business communication courses, the internship, and senior capstone.

Since you have transfer credits, those courses are added where they apply within that four-year plan. The best course of action when selecting your courses is to take courses from the top and work your way down. For example: if you have credit for three of the courses listed in the first semester, you should plan to take the other two courses and then move to the next semester to see what is next. As long as you move chronologically through the degree plan, you will be in good shape.

There is always a chance that the courses which are “next up” in your degree plan are either not available or don’t work with you school/life schedule. That’s fine, simply skip down to the next course that you are eligible to take.

If you are currently enrolled in a class or classes which do not show as completed on your degree plan, you can skip those. If that courses is a prerequisite for another course, you will not be permitted to enroll in the next course in the sequence until we have your grade on an official transcript which will be available to send to UTD in December. You can wait to enroll in that course and enroll in the rest now.

The Advisor view presents the degree plan according to the different curricular components, e.g. Core, Business Prep, Business Core, Major Core, Guided Electives, and General Electives. This will show you how you are progressing through each of these areas. In your first semester at UT Dallas you will take BCOM 3300 and a combination of Core, Business Prerequisites, and Business Core. These foundational courses will prepare you for upper-level, Major-related courses.

The Advising Office has prepared a video to assist you with finding your degree plan in eLearning, understanding how to read it and choose courses for next semester, and using the online catalog to look up your degree and required courses. You can access that video on the JSOM UG Advising webpage under “New Transfer Students” in the “Steps After Admission” section.

This website also provides useful tutorial videos for navigating the enrollment module which you can access in the “Manage My Classes” section of your Orion Student Center. This is one way to view your schedule and add/drop/swap courses; however, it is not the only way. Many students prefer to add their classes all at once using Schedule Planner (more info below), but you can only enroll in classes after your enrollment appointment.

Schedule Planner

This is the main module that you will use to enroll in classes. You will be able to access Schedule Planner once you have accepted your admission and you are changed to a matriculated student. This can take up to two business days from the time you accept your admission, so please do that immediately. We suggest logging into Galaxy and following along with the videos and guides available on the Schedule Planner page on the Office of the Registrar website.

You should be familiar with the following actions prior to your enrollment appointment (NOTE: you can do everything in Schedule Planner up to Registering for classes from the shopping cart):

• Add a class to the Build Schedule list using both the “By Subject” and “Search by Attribute” methods
• Search for, select, and deselect individual course sections in the Build Schedule options (gear)
• Add a break
• Create and View schedules
• Send schedules to shopping cart
• Register for classes from the shopping cart
• Drop and Swap classes

Contact

If you have any questions about information covered or not covered on this webpage, please contact the JSOM UG Recruiting and Onboarding office at jsomug@utdallas.edu or 972-883-5889.

Other contacts:

• Transfer Orientation (transferorientation@utdallas.edu)
• Financial Aid (financial-aid@utdallas.edu)
• Veterans Benefits Specialist (veteransbenefits@utdallas.edu)
• University Housing (housing@utdallas.edu)
• Office of Admission (admission@utdallas.edu)

TSI: Texas Success Initiative

This is a measure of college readiness which must be completed either through exemptions or TSI examination scores. Please see the TSI webpage in the catalog for more information.

You can contact the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE) regarding TSI issues by emailing tsi@utdallas.edu using your UTD email account and providing your date of birth in the email body.

NOTE: If you have a TSI hold, you will not be able to enroll in classes.

Changing your Major

Incoming students who are currently admitted into a JSOM major can change to a different JSOM major prior to enrolling in classes. You must accept your admission and then follow the steps outlined in this document. You do not need to wait until your Change of Major request is approved and processed before registering for orientation since our orientation slots are offered at the school level and not contingent on major.

If you are not currently a JSOM major, you can follow the same process; however, you should wait until your change of major is processed before registering for orientation. You may have to email freshmanorientation@utdallas.edu if you are unable to select a JSOM orientation after your change of major has been processed.

If you want to add a second major or a minor, you can tell us at orientation. Whether it is a major within JSOM or not, we can help you decide the best courses to take. To add your second major or minor, you can email jsomugadvising@utdallas.edu and work directly with your academic advisor. Again, this does not need to be done prior to orientation.

Need more help?

We will do our best to address all of your concerns at orientation, but, if you need anything in the meantime, please reach out to the Recruiting and Onboarding Office via email (jsomug@utdallas.edu) or phone (972-883-5889).