Psychosocial Factors That Predict the College Adjustment of First-Year Undergraduate Students: Implications for College Counselors
✍ Scribed by William E. Martin Jr.; Jody L. Swartz-Kulstad; Michael Madson
- Publisher
- American Counseling Association
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 862 KB
- Volume
- 2
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1099-0399
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The authors describe psychosocial factors that predicted college adjustment of 1 st-year undergraduate students on the basis of studies conducted in 2 universities of dSffering size. focus, and geographic location. Academic self-confidence, positive attitudes toward the university. and faculty and peer support significantly predicted more successful adjustment to college.
With the growing importance of a college education, the incidence of student attrition is increasingly costly to individuals, families, and universities. Regardless of whether the student leaves voluntarily or involuntarily, poor adjustment to college and to the specific college undergirds a student's decision to leave. Indeed, nearly 85% of students leave college voluntarily, even when acadzmic performance is not a concern (Tinto, 1987(Tinto, , 1993)). Strategic programming may help prevent student loss when attrition is a result of poor college adjustment. Researchers (e.g., Baker & Schultz, 1992; Brooks & DuBois. 1 995; McGrath & Braunstein, 1997) have maintained that factors leading to poor adjustment do not reside in the individual alone. Indeed, problems with adjustment reside within both person and environment factors (Swarm B Martin, 1997); Brooks and DuBois posited that this is particularly true for first-year college students.
According to Baker and Schultz (1 992), on the average, freshmen expect more from their college environment than they see themselves getting and expect more from themselves as well. They found that students whose levels of adjustment and personal performance expectations were low tended (a) to not perform as well academically in college, (b) to be more likely to seek services from a campus psychological services center, (c) to have a substantially higher rate of withdrawal from college, (d) to be less likely to graduate on time, and (e) to report less overall satisfaction with the college experience.