Navigating Your WSU Journey: A Guide to the myWSU Student Portal and New Coug Orientation

Embarking on your academic journey at Washington State University (WSU) is an exciting endeavor. To ensure a smooth transition, WSU provides comprehensive resources and programs, including the myWSU student portal and New Coug Orientation. This guide will walk you through the essential steps and information you need to navigate these tools effectively.

Pre-Campus Arrival: Setting the Stage for Success

Before you even set foot on campus, there are several crucial tasks to complete. These steps are designed to prepare you for orientation, advising, course registration, and ultimately, a successful start to your academic career. The Pre-Campus Arrival To-Do List should be completed before arriving on campus for your first semester of classes.

Essential Tasks Before Orientation

Register for a New Coug Orientation session: This is your official welcome to the WSU community.
Schedule and attend your advising consultation and course registration appointment: This crucial step ensures you're on the right track academically from day one.

CougReady: Your Online Preparation Program

CougReady is an online program specially designed to help new students prepare for New Coug Orientation, advising consultations, course registration, and the transition to life as a Coug. This program is divided into three steps:

Step 1: Prepares you for your advising consultation and course registration for your first semester.
Step 2: Focuses on practical matters such as move-in, purchasing textbooks, and important family conversations.
Step 3: Guides you on making the most of Week of Welcome, navigating the first month of classes, and building your community.

For any questions regarding CougReady, refer to the WSU resources.

Placement Assessments: Ensuring Proper Course Placement

It is important that students who need to take placement assessments complete them at least two weeks prior to their advising consultation and course registration appointment.

Read also: Comprehensive ETAR Guide

ALEKS Math Placement Assessment: Complete this assessment if you are not transferring in college-level math.
Writing Placement Assessment: Required if you plan to enroll in English 101 or an equivalent course. Students planning to enroll in the Honors College also need to take this assessment.

Advising Consultation and Course Registration: Your Academic Launchpad

All new students MUST complete an advising consultation and course registration BEFORE attending their New Coug Orientation session. During your remote, online consultation, an academic advisor from your college or the Academic Success and Career Center will review your transcripts, placement assessment scores, and degree plan as they help you register for your first semester of classes. The goal of this appointment is to set you up for a successful first semester. Scheduling will become available in early May. In your first semester, you will be assigned an academic advisor within your college.

To make the most of your advising session:

Send updated transcripts prior to your scheduled advising consultation. This includes Spring grades, AP test scores, and any other college-level coursework. Unofficial transcripts are acceptable for this purpose.
Make sure your high school or transfer institution and testing agencies are sending final official transcripts and test scores to the WSU Office of Admissions.

Housing: Securing Your Home Away From Home

You can apply for housing after you have confirmed your offer of enrollment. If you’re eligible to live off-campus, explore additional options at offcampusliving.wsu.edu. The priority deadline for new housing applications is May 1. All applications received at that time will be treated equally in the first round of the placement process.

As a part of the Fall Start New Coug Orientation experience, students are encouraged to stay in the residence halls for the night between their session dates at the cost of $40. Additional night(s) before or after the orientation session are available upon request at $40 per night. Housing is not provided during Spring & August New Coug Orientation sessions.

Mandatory Programming: Building a Safe and Respectful Community

WSU requires all new students to complete mandatory programming focused on creating a safe and respectful campus environment. These programs include:

Read also: Accessing the Cal Poly Portal

Consent and Respect: This course discusses healthy and unhealthy relationships, the importance of consent, and how to report gender-based violence if it occurs.
Alcohol Wise: This 15-20-minute self-guided alcohol survey provides feedback specific to your own alcohol usage. The program is required for all incoming students who will be under the age of 21 at the beginning of their first semester.
Hazing and Hosting: This course helps you identify and report hazing if you see it happening. It is your responsibility to complete this program during your first semester. Failure to complete the course will result in a hold on your student account.

The myWSU Portal: Your Central Hub for Information and Resources

The myWSU portal is a simple and easy-to-use tool for accessing the web resources you need to fulfill your goals with WSU. Based on your affiliation with the university, it anticipates what you may need by providing you a personalized default set of resources. These resources can be changed and customized by you according to your preferences. WSU students, faculty, and staff can use the portal. The portal will display different information based on your role at WSU. Content can be reorganized and customized. However, it's not just students/faculty/staff who can use the portal! and by requesting authorization to access services such as making payments on behalf of their student.

Accessing and Navigating the Portal

myWSU is a web-based portal, so it can be used from any computer with an Internet connection. Navigate to my.wsu.edu and enter your WSU Network ID and password. Your myWSU portal username is your WSU Network ID (NID). used for access to most campus systems including the myWSU Portal, wireless, and local networks. Certain affiliates are eligible for a Friend ID. Click here to create a NID or FID. Parents or other third parties need to be granted Third Party Access by the WSU student. More Third Party Access information is available here. If you are having trouble logging into the portal, please click here to reset your password.

Oracle has certified Internet Explorer 7 or 8, Mozilla FireFox 3.0 or higher, and Safari 5.0 or higher. You can access the Portal using other web browsers (like Google Chrome) that are not certified by Oracle, but you may be required to give permission to view some content or navigate to secured sites.

Key Features and Customization

Tabs: Tabs are the central way to navigate the myWSU portal. Default tabs are set for each user based on their Active Directory affiliation, such as "Student," "Faculty," or "Staff." Each user will also have a "My Page" tab, and perhaps additional tabs dependent on their role with the University. a Vet Med student will see a "College of Veterinary Medicine" tab in the portal.
Pagelets: Pagelets are the newspaper-style information boxes that appear on your tabs. added according to the user's preference. The only pagelet that cannot be customized is the "Notices" pagelet. This pagelet is required and fixed. buttons on the top bar of each pagelet can be used to Refresh, Edit, Minimize, or Delete the pagelet. clicking the "Layout" link. To watch a tutorial or view a PDF explaining how to do so, click here.
Favorites: Favorites are the functions you use most often inside the portal. myWSU portal for registration and grades will notice that those two functions add themselves to their favorites.
Calendar Integration: The portal contains a Pullman (or urban campus) Calendar which displays events from the WSU Events and WSU Academic calendars. With time, there will be other calendars available to view in the portal. Additionally, the myWSU Portal allows you to integrate multiple calendars using the "My Events" pagelet. To watch a tutorial click here. Or to view a PDF explaining how to do so, click here. The My Events calendar pagelet is a way to integrate multiple calendars to view in one pagelet. To add calendars to "My Events," view My Events in full page view, and click "Go to My Calendars." This is where you can add/delete calendars and customize your view.
Notices and Announcements: Notices are only messages that must have a receipt confirmation for HIPPA/FERPA purposes or for important university functions. Notices will display on the Student/Faculty/Staff tab in the portal. Announcements are general university information sent mostly through WSU Announcements.

Additional Portal Information

Training Resources: Yes! There are two ways to view training in the myWSU Portal. and if you prefer, there are also PDF files available with step-by-step instructions, found here.
Customization: Yes. many features that can be added or removed at the user's discretion by clicking the "Layout" and "Content" links in the top right corner of the portal.
Campus Specificity: No, it is not campus specific. based on their campus affiliation through Active Directory.
Pagelet Limits: No, there is no limit.
News Headlines: Authorized people from colleges, departments, and student groups.. users can be sent news headlines as they are published. tab in the portal. how to do so, click here.
Single Sign-On: Yes, myWSU is single sign-on. Those applications that can integrate with ADFS/Oracle have single sign-on.
Content Management: Each individual user controls the content on their Student/Faculty/Staff and My Page tabs, through the Layout and Content links in the portal. The content in the colleges tabs (College of Education, for example) is maintained by the colleges themselves.
Mobile Access: You can navigate to the portal using your mobile device, but not all functionality is currently available via mobile web. The portal team is working on making the portal more compatible with mobile usage.
ASWSU Elections: Yes, students will vote in ASWSU elections through the myWSU portal as they did with the old MyWSU system.
Security: Yes. We send and receive data from the myWSU portal using a secure HTTP connection.
Bookmarking: Yes. You can bookmark a link to my.wsu.edu but you will need to log in each time you use the portal.
Third-Party Integration: OrgSync and RSO portal exist outside of the myWSU portal.
Angel Integration: Yes, Angel is available.

Global Campus Students

If you have received notice from WSU that you’ve been accepted, you will receive a welcome message from the Global Campus. On the site, you can:

Find out what equipment you need to learn online.
Determine if your computer meets software and hardware requirements.
Test your internet speed.
Explore skills you’ll need to succeed as an online student.
Access tech tool resources including tutorials.
Learn about free software available to WSU students and presentation and collaboration tools you may encounter while learning online.

Students taking courses through the Global Campus need regular access to a desktop or laptop computer with stable Internet access. Because your computer is your connection to your courses-essentially the way you “go to class”-you also need to have a backup plan should your primary computer become unavailable. Check the Technology Requirements to be sure your computer is up to date, and review the information about protecting your computer on the Tech Support page.

Read also: Accessing the MUSD Student Portal

Browse for courses in the Schedules of Classes. Be sure to select the More Information link associated with the course to learn what materials are required. Many course information pages also provide links to syllabi near the bottom of the page. Please note: If information is not yet listed on the course information page, be sure to check back. Review the Academic Calendar to become familiar with critical deadlines.

Contact Information Updates

Go to my.wsu.edu and sign in with your WSU network ID and password. Start by making sure your contact information is accurate; select Profile, then review the information listed under Personal Details, Contact Details and Addresses.

Notices via Text Message

To do so, choose your cell phone carrier from the drop-down list. Notices will also be available in the myWSU portal, in the "Notices" pagelet. You do not need to provide your cell phone number for Notices. However, you will need to provide your mobile phone number to receive Notices via text message. This system is separate from the WSU Alerts system, which sends text messages in the event of an emergency.

Signing Out

Click on the "Sign Out" link when you are finished using the portal.

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