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APP is the Admissions Partnership Program. Essentially what it does is allows a transfer
student that's at a community college essentially to become a student here at Iowa State.
I think a lot of people go to community college with the intent of transferring, so it's really
important to have resources to help with that. It really makes you a student of Iowa State
before you actually arrive here. I, like, grew up in a small town, with, like,
a smaller high school, so it was, I was really happy to find out that you could go to DMACC,
like, with smaller classes, but you could get, like, the feel for, like, the college
experience with, like, meeting a ton of people and, like, all that kind of stuff.
I think it helped me anticipate coming to Iowa State.
I wasn't just getting thrown into a huge campus or a huge setting, I was kinda eased into
the college life. I lived here with a bunch of people but still, like, had smaller classrooms
and could adapt to what college was going to be like and the workload.
Just having access to the advisor was probably the biggest one for me, because, I'm really,
just overwhelming sometimes, with classes. A peer mentor for the APP program is a really
great opportunity because you really get to interact with these students who are coming
in and provide really great resources for them.
It really helped me as far as making sure I was taking the right courses to be equivalent
to what is here and necessary to get some of the gen eds and science and my physical
sciences out of the way. It really helped to be able to talk to somebody
who knew what I'd been doing, what classes I'd been taking and, um, the progress I'd
been making instead of talking to somebody new every time.
Knowing that the classes I had would come in and transfer and I didn't have to worry
about anything, trying to figure out which class was what, it was already done, so, a
lot less stress! Being a part of the APP you get the student
mentor, like me, that, um, will be able to give you the insight of "hey, I transferred
here, too, let me help you with your transfer". You get direct contact with your advisor and
you also get the perspective of a peer mentor, so it's really great to get to help these
students through the transfer process, because I went through it myself.
I had a lot of questions before I transferred, and I know a lot of other transfer students
had those questions too, like we always wondered how the classes here compare.
They have the personal experience, all of them have transferred in so they know what
it's like to transfer into Iowa State University. I know there were a lot of things that I struggled
with that would've been really nice to just have a familiar face or a contact point to
um, get information from. Advisors are really great with classes and stuff, but they haven't
actually experienced the transition themselves, so as mentors, we can give a lot of really
great insight that advisors wouldn't necessarily have.
Being part of the APP, you're already considered a student at Iowa State while you're taking
courses at your community college, so you get all the benefits of being a student at
Iowa State. I didn't miss out on the Iowa State experience.
The only difference was I was going to classes at DMACC instead of on campus here. I just
lived in the dorms and no one even knew that I even went to DMACC unless I told them.
I go to DMACC, but I get to, like, have all the perks at Iowa State, like I get to work
out at the Lied, and, like, I have the all-sports package for like, to go to, like, basketball
games and football games. Even though you're not on campus, you can
still participate in any club or organization offered at any college on campus.
You can go to the Career Fair, you have access to our Career Management Services site, um,
you can, you have your own ID card already, so you can do anything that requires that,
and you get an ISU email. Some of the things I took advantage of were
the transit site that connects you right to the transfer part of the computer on Iowa
State's website, so you can keep track of what classes you're taking and how they transfer
in and the different codes they use so that you know that you're on track.
You can look up what community college or university that you are in and kind of figure
out what exactly what courses will come in as what here at Iowa State and if they will
be able to transfer. I also took advantage of the cross-enrollment
program. What that is is I got to take a class here at Iowa State while I was still at DMACC,
and it was a semester before I transferred, so it helped me get used to Iowa State a little
bit before I actually came up here and officially transferred here as a full-time student.
Our Facebook group allows us to post about, just different things that we see on campus,
different things going on in the College of Engineering. It's a great way to just check
it because it goes right to your Facebook, which is very popular these days, and we also
encourage all of our members to post anything on it. They can ask us questions or postings
that they find interesting, so it's a good connection point between the mentors and the
mentees themselves. I think it makes for a really smooth transfer.
I would highly recommend the partnership program because it's cheaper, I didn't miss out on
the Iowa State experience and it was a smooth transition into Iowa State.
It made the transfer process cupcakes. I mean, basically, all I had to do was fill out the
application and a week later that's it.