 In this video, we will be discussing strategic scheduling and how it can help us plan your first semester schedule. Before we explain that concept, let's talk about a common misconception about undecided students. Many first-year undecided students and their families express concern that starting college without a major means starting off behind. This isn't the case for exploration students at Ohio State. Our strategic scheduling process is designed to ensure that you are taking classes that help you explore or confirm major choices while staying on track for a timely graduation. Let's talk about what this means. Strategic scheduling is a process where we use your current academic interests, goals, and earned credit to help inform your course selections. We'll prioritize university-wide general education requirements and, if applicable, prerequisites for competitive majors. This strategy keeps you on track for a timely graduation while helping you explore majors of interest. As a result of strategic scheduling, most EXP students declare with confidence and stay in the college where they declare. In addition, four- and six-year graduation rates for students who start in exploration are the same as for students who begin in a declared major. There are two basic approaches to strategic scheduling. The first approach is for undecided students. This includes those who are not sure what major they wish to pursue. Undecided students may have some general ideas about their focus area or majors of interest, but may be exploring majors more broadly. For this population, we will focus on scheduling general education classes that will satisfy requirements across majors. In addition, we will take into consideration any focus areas for majors of interest that have specific requirements that need to be completed in a timely manner. The second approach is for undeclared students. These are students who have specific major in mind that they wish to pursue, but need to complete some requirements before being eligible to apply or declare. For these students, we will focus on those prerequisite courses, as well as general education classes that will be needed to graduate from Ohio State. You might be wondering what exactly this looks like. Let's check out two examples. While these might not describe your personal situation, hopefully they'll illustrate how we take your current interests and put them together with university requirements to plan an appropriate schedule. Our first example is a student that's unsure about a major, but is interested in the Health and Human Services focus area and is considering medical school. This student is scheduled for pre-calculus, a requirement for many science and health based majors, chemistry 1210, a prerequisite for medical school, and a general education class, sociology 1101, which satisfies a social science GE requirement, and is recommended for pre-med students. This may not seem like a lot, but when you add the exploration survey class, this is a total of 14 hours, which is right on target for a first year student. Let's compare our undecided student's schedule with that of a pre-med biology major. You'll notice that the two schedules look almost exactly the same. The only difference in these schedules is the university survey class. University survey is required for all incoming first year students and is always taken in the student's current College of Enrollment. Exploration students are enrolled in Exploration Survey. The biology major is enrolled in the Arts and Sciences Survey. All survey classes will cover university policy, procedures, and resources. Exploration survey will also cover majors at Ohio State, the relationship between majors and careers, and degree planning. Our second example is of an undeclared student who wants to study finance in the Fisher College of Business. The student is enrolled in business calculus and microeconomics, both general education classes that are required by Fisher, and two more GE classes. With the addition of the required university survey class, this student is at 15 credit hours. Let's compare our undeclared student's schedule with that of a student starting in the Fisher College of Business. Again, you'll notice the only difference is that survey class. As you have seen in the previous slides, exploration advisors are skilled at taking a student's current interests and academic goals and helping them identify a first semester schedule that will keep them on track while exploring possible majors. We will be tailoring your schedule based on your personal interests, goals, and any credits that you have earned through advanced placement tests, international baccalaureate tests, and college level coursework. For those of you waiting on AP or IB scores, don't worry, we'll work with your best guesstimate of your scores and then make subsequent adjustments to your schedule as needed after scores post. The more information you can provide to us about your interests and goals, the better we can assist you in putting together a schedule tailored to your needs. Please think about your interests and goals, and make sure you fill out our Qualtrics questionnaire to help us prepare for your appointment. Send an AP scores, IB scores, or transcripts to Ohio State, and take some time to use the scheduling resources on our website to explore GE classes and find ones that sound interesting to you. This is your opportunity to take something new and interesting, so take advantage of it.