Congrats on your acceptance! Now what?

I applied for the spring term so my application was due on September 1st. After 7 rejection letters preceeding it (we all know how competitive Communication Disorder grad programs are), it was a welcome sight to see the chubby little envelope. The letter arrived on October 20th via USPS.

The letter gives you a lot of info but doesn't come near to preparing you for all that you will have to do before you actually arrive to the campus. Of courese, most importantly you have to submit your intention to accept the offer. Do it right away! The sooner you do, the sooner you can get started on the registration process.

The acceptance letter also gives you several links. Some of the links take you to course options and when you can take them and also gives a link to all of the books you will need. You are encouraged to start buying your books right away but at this point you won't have a schedule yet. What was probalby the most helpful was the page that notifies you of what requrements you may be missing. I was missing two undergrad classes.

It seems like there is no proper way to figure out your schedule other than emailing Dr. Swift. She will basically just tell you what classes to register for. Some people who were smart also asked Dr. Swift for their student number. Once you have that you can set up your student account and start registering. I did it the roundabout way and called up the registrar. I had to give them a few details about myself (birth date, SSN, address, etc.) before they would give me the student number but once they did I was easily able to set up my student account, email account, and then register.

Once I registered I started buying the books. Buying books is a beast! I needed a total of 19 required books for my first term. I decided not to buy two of them that seemed to be mostly reference (we'll see if I regret that decision) but for the rest of the 17, it cost me just over $600 and that's buying almost all used. Make sure you make room in your budget for books!

In additoin to registering, as soon as you accept your spot at ENMU starting looking for housing right away, especially if you are starting in the Spring term. The rest of the students are already settled at that point following the Fall term so you have to hope and scrounge for a vacancy. I will write a post later specifying housing options.

Finallly, what I took away from this first step in the acceptance process was that when in doubt, email Dr. Swift. After chatting with a few other new students, it was the consensus that emailing Dr. Swift is how most people navigated their way around the initial process.

After a few weeks, Dr. Swift will drop a massive email with about 20 things to take care of before your arrival, including information on how to sign up with Certified Profile. When I first got that email, I freaked out! It seemed like an endless list and I had no idea where to start but once I started tackling the items it wasn't so bad. But again, more on the Certified Profile maddness in another post.

If you've made it this far in the post then I'm guessing that you were one of the recently accepted students. Congrats and welcome to the ENMU family!

About the blog

Hello everyone. My name is Deanna and I recently was accepted to the Graduate Communication Disorders program and ENMU which starts in January.

Ever since getting my acceptance letter in mid-October, everything that has to be done has been a little bit overwhelming and I've felt a bit lost through the process.

Although I'm guessing a lot of my experiences are going to be CDIS specific, my goal with this blog is to help all ENMU future students, who are coming from all areas of the country to have some documentation of what they should expect. I'm coming from Los Angeles and it's my first experience trying to figure out important things such as housing and such while out of state.

As I meet more people, I'm hoping that I can have others contribute to this blog in guest spots. So far my blog topic ideas include housing, what's up in Portales including stores and restaurants you can find and reviews of them, stuff about ENMU, program specfic things like steps I took from admission letter to orientation, etc.

Also, this blog will essentially tell a story in chronological order. In other words, as I gain more information, I will update old blog entries or even write a new blog on the same topic with more detail/pictures. A lot of the stuff that I blog about before January I won't know much about since I'm out of state, but rest assured I will try to update things as they come along. Oh, and don't hold me to anything that I say. I'm sure I'll make mistakes through the process and I'll try and go back and update any misinformation.

Please be warned, I am very ambitious in starting this blog right now. I currently have plenty of time to work on it and gather my musings but depending on my workload once school starts, this whole idea might fall to the wayside.

Enjoy and please leave feedback and/or blog topic ideas. If you have any questions, please contact me and ask away and I'll try to get an answer for you and blog about it.