Getting into your first-choice college may not guarantee a happy life, but does it increase the odds of satisfaction during your freshman year?
John H. Pryor’s a good person to ask. After all, he’s the director of Cooperative Institutional Research Program, run by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. The institute conducts an annual survey of more than 400,000 incoming freshmen, as well as Your First College Year Survey, which assesses new students’ academic and personal development.
At the College Board’s annual conference in Washington last week, Mr. Pryor presented data on factors that influence freshman satisfaction. He’s found that students who attend their first-choice college are slightly more likely to be satisfied than students who end up at colleges other than their “dream school.” More influential is whether students anticipate that they’ll be satisfied.
But what matters most, by far, is everything that happens to students after they enroll. The most powerful predictor of student satisfaction is a “sense of belonging,” Mr. Pryor found. Those who feel connected to campus life are more inclined to feel content with their college choice. And the level of interaction students have with faculty members is also an important predictor.
“The experiences that the students have on campus can really override what they thought coming in,” Mr. Pryor says.
Although those findings are not necessarily surprising, they seem especially relevant at a time when financial concerns and rising selectivity might keep many students from enrolling at their No. 1 most-fave college. Last year, nearly 61 percent of freshmen surveyed said they were attending their first-choice college, a good reminder that most students don’t experience the horror of Ivy League rejection, or, perhaps, any rejection at all.
Yet Mr. Pryor says that the percentage of students attending their first choice has dipped slightly in recent years. “More students are being accepted at first choices but then not going there,” Mr. Pryor says, “and the reasons are financial.”
In other findings, students who say that making money is a very important reason for attending college are somewhat less likely to report satisfaction than do students who cite other factors, such as gaining an appreciation for ideas or pursuing personal interests. And, moms and dads, listen up: Students who said that their parents had strongly influenced their college choice were less likely to report satisfaction than other students.
2 Responses to The Science of Student Satisfaction
wdabc - November 3, 2010 at 4:46 am
“The most powerful predictor of student satisfaction is a sense of belonging.” South Korean universities do this very well. In spite of the fact that academic rigor is non existant, the students love their school because of all of the attention, events, trips, unearned “As” etc, that they receive.
markcorkery - November 9, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Colleges natiowide are taking a not-so-new approach to their retention efforts. As the old guard retires, their replacements are finding that this sense of affiliation goes back much further to the days of Maslow’s research among others but most profoundly to the mid-1980s when we had a growing trough of college bound students. Much has changed since the time of fret and worry of those times of too few students; admissions deans, however, still are concerned about making the numbers as technology and other factors have made it harder to predict those paid deposits. From my days at Boston University and then in my position as a college consultant, the name of the game today is even more the proper fit between students and colleges. I see the fall out from students not able to get into their top choices and parents making the decisions for their children as factors contributing to student dissatisfaction of the final choice. Developing organizational continuity is key. From the point of inquiry with admission through the first and often second year of college and beyond — touchstones of professors, advisors, deans, and career counselors play vital roles today in a school’s retention efforts at all levels. UCLA’s CIRP survey describes their findings which are significant; taking up the charge of institutional continuity to this end is often harder said than done given the often fractiousness of our institutions of higher education. In the end, it is the students for whom we work. Communicating clearly the academic, learning, and student culture of the institution is not only important for an admission office, but every professional who represents the school to students and parents alike. Retention does not start at the opening of the ceremonious gates at freshman orientation, it begins with the phenomenon of student life planning and college selection. Getting in to the most popular or most competitive schools is often the perspective of the family. Colleges, on the other hand, are looking for students they can more accurately predict will show up — and come back. Our roles as educators can bridge that gap in perception relative to college choice and academic success; retention efforts begin with communicating how the institution first responds to the affiliation needs of its students.