Residential Academic Programs (RAP) provides UMass Amherst students with the opportunity to participate in a variety of rewarding academic and social experiences. Students that participate in a RAP program quickly become part of the UMass Amherst community. RAP programming gives students the tools to build a strong foundation for their academic and personal success.

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umass.edu/rap/about-rap

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
- Another true/false question: All first-year students must join a RAP. Who thinks this is true? Who thinks this it's false? And the wave of hands. All right. Kind of tricky there, cool. You were right, false. All first-year students don't need to join a RAP. We work for RAP, Residential Academic Programs. But I will say about 40% of first-year students regularly sign up for a RAP. RAPs are popular. You keep hearing us say Residential Academic Program. What does that really mean? Well, Residential Academic Program is basically a bundled deal, the residential area plus a class. So you'll be taking this course in your residential area. Beyond that, there's a lot of other benefits.

-Now there's a wide variety of RAPs around campus. We have major-specific RAPs. We have honors college RAPs. We have gen-ed RAPs. But the one thing that ties them all together is that it's building this community between the residential and the academic side. Now, I specifically work, or we specifically work, for our gen-ed RAPs. Our gen-ed RAPs are our most popular RAPs around campus. And I'm gonna take this as an opportunity to brag a bit. So, gen-ed RAPs are pretty sweet. I'm not gonna lie. They're capped at 30 students, so they're a real small environment.

-Beyond that, they're subject-based, just like any class on the main campus. And beyond that, it fulfills the same distribution requirements as any regular main campus class. Some of the extra benefits of this though, are the community you're building, and the people teaching you. These RAPs are being taught by advanced grad students who are specifically interested in teaching new students, and specifically interested in the topic they're teaching, which is a plus. So much so that they actually focus on that. Many of them, all of them that I've met, their dissertation is related to the class they teach. And it gets really interesting. Like I said they're subject-based.

-So you're signing up for this class 'cause you're interested. One of the RAPs that I'm familiar with is African American History RAP. It looks at African American history, like any African American history course. But through the lens of popular music, which is sweet. You come into the class first week and you're talking about how rap and pop kind of highlight our current state of being. That's pretty dope.

-What's special even beyond that is that you're living near all of these people that are in this class. They're not the only people you're living with. We're not trying to build a cult. But you're living with, you're living near these people. So after class, you know, you're gonna be nerding out. You get to nerd out all the way back to your residential hall. It's a great opportunity. I've heard a lot of instructors really appreciate the energy that students come into this class, because they really want to be there. And yeah I know a lot of you might be thinking to yourself well hey, I wanna sign up because of the residential hall, so I can lock in my place in a residential hall. Cool. But embrace the class. Really get the most out of it by being a part of that class and making that class your first community at UMASS. A space not to just dive into the topic of the course, but also ask questions like, what's going on? There's a lot. That was a joke. Anyways. I wanted to take a quick moment to also highlight our website. Our website may look different when you actually check it. We're constantly updating it. But if you go to umass.edu/RAP, you can find our website, which gives you much more detailed information on how to sign up for a RAP. It's super easy. Just make sure that you're signed up for a new student orientation session, and have your housing contract filled before May 17 when we open our RAPs for students. On our website, you can actually search RAPs by gen-ed requirement, or by subject, there we go. That's the word I was thinking about, or by location. So, I highly recommend looking at it, keeping an eye out for some classes that might interest you, some residential areas you might be interested in living in.

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