The first Friday night that Georgetown University first-years and transfer students experience on campus is spent in the August heat under the floodlights of Cooper Field as New Student Orientation (NSO) kicks off in an opening ceremony.
Over its five days of programming, NSO launches approximately 1,600 new first-years and 99 new transfers into events, icebreakers, campus tours and panel lunches, all designed to promote community and introduce students to the school. Four student coordinators and 21 orientation captains lead a team of 130 orientation advisors (OAs) who serve as guides for new students as they begin to navigate life at Georgetown.
Each OA leads a group of around 15 students, each residents of the same hall, which serves as an early community for new Hoyas.
For Simone Guité (CAS ’26), NSO was an opportunity to form a lasting friend group — both through NSO programming and through a walk to the National Mall with members of her orientation group.
“We got kind of lost, but it’s okay, because it gave us more time to talk and get to know each other. And then we, a lot of us, have been friends ever since,” Guité told The Hoya. “It’s a really fun story now to tell about how we all met.”
Nivriti Chaudhuri (MSB ’28) said she was able to cultivate budding friendships through events during this year’s NSO.
“That built a sort of community, especially because I didn’t know very many people within my dorm; it’s just the people you see in the elevator,” Chaudhuri told The Hoya. “I met some of my best friends from my dorm, and they’re so amazing.”
Sara Lin (CAS ’28) said while NSO provided an environment that eased her into making new friends, she found the expectation to stay within set groups stifled opportunities to get to know other new students before classes began Aug. 28.
“I enjoyed spending a lot of time with the group that I was assigned and meeting this smaller group of people,” Lin told The Hoya. “But I think that if NSO was designed in a way where you were able to have more close interactions with people outside of your group, it would have been more interesting.”
Designing NSO 2024
Each year’s NSO is the product of eight months of work from four coordinators, who spend the summer months working 20 hours a week to ensure NSO programming can proceed smoothly — and incorporate lessons from their own NSO experiences into the agendas of the five days they spend at least 40 hours running.
James Dolan (CAS ’25), who served as one of the NSO coordinators for this year’s NSO, said this year’s coordinators aimed to promote open communication, conflict resolution and mentorship for event participants.
“The four coordinators and our boss spent a lot of time discussing the intentionality behind a lot of the words that we used on our slides, and how exactly do we communicate ideas of mentorship, how to facilitate dialogue, how to de-escalate a situation if something happens and being able to communicate those those ideas and those skills to a large and diverse group,” Dolan told The Hoya.
Working under the coordinators are captains, who serve as the main point of contact for OAs, and the advisors themselves, who work hands-on with new students, leading them through exhaustive programming — and, under this year’s theme, “NSShow,” symbolically giving new students the chance to grow their voices on campus.
Felix Dosmond (CAS ’27), an OA this semester, said the students who make up NSO leadership bring a positive spirit to campus.
“The leaders, the captains and the coordinators are some of the most energized people on campus; there’s a constant song and dance, literally and metaphorically,” Dosmond told The Hoya. “I think that then translates to the whole opening ceremony and first activities with people.”
Dylan Shapiro (CAS ’26), who served as an OA during the 2023 NSO and as a captain this year, said OAs’ goal is to ensure new students feel comfortable with Georgetown’s campus and empowered to seek new friendships.
“Your goal as an OA is to make your new students comfortable enough in a new environment that they go out and form new connections,” Shapiro wrote to The Hoya. “There is no version of your first week at college that is a totally chill and relaxing experience, 100% of the time — it’s stressful, because it’s new and that’s okay!”
“The job of an OA is to guide you through that anxiety and make sure you know that whatever stresses and fears you may be experiencing right now, you will figure them out and you can find your people at Georgetown,” Shapiro added.
For this year’s orientation leaders, a main focus was ensuring students were able to handle the logistics of life at Georgetown; to do so, the coordinators decided to convert the usual “Hoya Life 101” video presentation about logistics of meal plans, laundry and printing into an OA-led panel event allowing students to better dialogue with OAs, according to OA Jon Plummer (SFS ’27).
“I had one person who asked about how to access Woodstock theological library. I did not know about that during student orientation, but I was able to talk to someone and get them in contact with one of the librarians, and they really enjoyed that. So connections and community for sure, I think are the most important things,” Plummer said.
Plummer said the coordinators were also more flexible this year with NSO attendance, allowing students more free time to interact or rest.
“There is definitely more of an emphasis on viewing attendance as more casual and requiring more participation,” Plummer said. “There were some events that were more mandatory than others, and they went in with the expectation, knowing that not everyone’s going to show up to these events and that’s okay.”
Dosmond said this new tactic was successful for his new students.
“I was able to get good engagement out of them because I was realistic and like that, they’re not going to be coming to activities that, you know, they’re like at the end of a long day,” Dosmond said. “I think it was just realistic that those are a ‘choose your own path’ sort of thing.”
NSO’s Impact on Upperclassmen Experiences
NSO serves both as an introduction to Georgetown’s social environment, but also to its academic environment through panel events like the Marino Family International Writers’ Academic Workshop, in which students discuss a novel from an international author, or academic meetings with deans or peer advisors.
But Guite said the most abiding memories she has of NSO involve friendships — including those formed not through planned events, but through coincidence.
“I met my roommate during NSO, my current roommate, because we just happened to be next to each other in line to go into Lohrfink Auditorium to listen to a presentation about safety,” Guite said. “We just happened to be standing next to each other in line and introduced ourselves to each other, and then we sat next to each other for the whole presentation and we exchanged numbers. And years later, we’re now roommates.”
Doga Bozkurt (SFS ’26) said NSO provided a baseline from which she could explore Washington, D.C. and make new friends independently.
“The groups that we were divided into, where we went and did activities, was a great starting point, but more so, it was through the process of just organic, just existing in the same space that really allowed me to make friends during my first week,” Bozkurt told The Hoya.
Ciara Desai (CAS ’28) said the friends she made through her OA group gave her friendly faces to recognize on a new campus.
“It kind of gave it a little group of people to talk to, because now I can see people around, and I actually know their names and know who they are,” Desai told The Hoya.
Lin did not feel as reliant on NSO to make new friends because she is a student-athlete.
“I think it was a little bit different, just because when I arrived at school, knowing that I was going to partake in a sport made it easier for me to become comfortable,” Lin said. “I knew that I already knew people, and I already knew that I had a group of people to be with if I needed to.”
Still, according to Lin, NSO was important in that it encouraged her to meet other students who were not athletes.
“I also think it’s important for people who are student-athletes to reach out to people that play other sports or don’t play any sports at all, so you meet a broader group of people and make more friends outside of your sport,” Lin said. “I definitely appreciated that aspect.”
But beyond forming friendships, some students described NSO as exhausting — especially as they attempted to adjust on their own to the demands of college life.
Lin said the long days of NSO programming were a little daunting and she did not feel incentivized to attend all the events.
“I think that I would have preferred the days were shorter, but I didn’t really have a problem with the number of days,” Lin said. “But I think the whole thing, like breakfast to dinner and then optional, post-dinner events taking up the entire day was not the most attractive thing.”
An Suzuki (MSB ’27) said she found NSO did not have enough time for students to interact.
“A lot of my memories of NSO are just info sessions, and I think it could have leaned a little bit more towards making new friends,” Suzuki said.
Bozkurt said NSO’s rapid pace ensured she was able to better adapt to living in the United States for the first time after growing up in Turkey.
“For me, it was very busy, but it was also good because it kept your mind out of the pains that you might be feeling as a part of moving to somewhere new,” Bozkurt said. “So it was just distracting in the best sense.”
Dosmond said he felt a lack of freedom during NSO in his first year — inspiring him to improve the experience for first-years as an OA.
“I wanted to come to college and not go through planned programming,” Dosmond said. “Originally, I wasn’t super keen on the program, and that’s kind of what motivated me to become an orientation adviser myself.”
For Hannah Block (SFS ’27), another OA this semester, it was skipping NSO events as a first-year that pushed her to become a leader for new students this year.
“I felt like my first semester at college was really lacking because I just was unaware about how the community worked,” Block told The Hoya. “I didn’t know how to print stuff until the end of the year, and that’s because I didn’t want to go to NSO. I thought, as an OA, if I can make NSO more engaging and fun, then hopefully I can make other people’s first semester better than mine was.”
The Transfer Student NSO Experience
Amidst the hubbub of new students experiencing college for the first time, transfer students also participated in the same programming as new first-years — a second, or even third, orientation.
Owen Simon (CAS ’26) transferred to Georgetown in Fall 2023 and said he wished NSO had offered a more tailored program for transfer students.
“I don’t think there was a lot of effort in the first few NSO days to make the transfers do separate things than freshmen,” Simon told The Hoya.
Simon said orientation at his former university was a better opportunity to bond with other new students.
“I think my first orientation experience probably focused a little bit more on building community within my little group,” Simon said. “I felt like here we attended all these events together, but there wasn’t that much time to get to know the people within your own group.”
Another transfer student, Ella Levine (MSB ’26), said she felt some of the events were repetitive for her during her NSO in Fall 2023.
“We’re already students who have gone through college,” Levine told The Hoya. “We know how alcohol works and we know what it takes to be successful in college for the most part.”
Levine said she hopes transfers’ NSO programming can become more distinct from first-years’ in the future.
Alessia Turner (CAS ’27), a new student who transferred to Georgetown this semester, said she had a positive experience with NSO, though it was less personal than the orientation at her previous university.
“We did a lot more off-campus events and exploring the campus. We went to our garden and planted things,” Turner told The Hoya. “But we did, with Georgetown NSO, have one off-campus event where we went to the Air and Space Museum.”
NSO Coordinators have a tough job — helping a large and diverse group of students from all over the world discover and learn about the place they will call home for the next few years. While every student takes away something different from NSO, their OA groups and advisors help them to find their initial sense of belonging on the Hilltop.
For orientation staffers, NSO provides a note of pride as new students find their feet on a once-confusing campus.
“Every year is filled with new students, terrified that they will be disasters, or that they won’t figure it out, or that they’re a mess — and every year they’re wrong,” Shapiro wrote.