Everything about your first year at W&J College is designed to forge the foundation you need to thrive here. Let's dream big about where you want to go four years from now so that, together, we can craft the best possible first year for you on your way there. From the moment you join the W&J College community, our mission is to create room for your passions, present the appropriate challenges to sharpen those passions and provide the support you need to achieve more than you might imagine.
Planning Your First Year
Before you arrive, we will handcraft a schedule based on your interests, make residence assignments, and select the best mentors to help you build the bridges to where you're headed. Planning your first year is so much more than a packing list (but you'll get one of those, too!)
![planning planning](http://0zpl.cindystewartphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/planning.png)
Orientation is a Process
From the Forge Your Foundation orientation to transition-to-college activities on campus throughout the first year, you'll have many opportunities to engage in campus traditions for the first time and create life-long relationships with faculty, peers, and mentors.
![orientation orientation](http://0zpl.cindystewartphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/orientation.png)
First Year Seminar
Matching your interests with a faculty advisor and like-minded peers who live and learn with you, your first-year seminar orients you to the liberal arts tradition at W&J College through thoughtful discussion that will pique your intellectual curiosity.
![seminar seminar](http://0zpl.cindystewartphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/seminar.jpg)
First Year Experience FAQs
Your first-year experience at W&J College begins before you arrive with the Gateway program. The Gateway program helps guide your transition from high school. Online access to forms, key dates and deadlines, information about housing, moving, dining, services on campus, courses and placement, orientation, and athletics, Gateway provides entry into all things W&J College before you arrive.
While you get to know us, we get to know you, too. As we learn more about you, we prepare your welcome to campus and your first semester. We'll create your schedule, make housing assignments, identify your mentors, and champion your dreams for your time at W&J College.