General Overview of College
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The lack of experiential knowledge about college is a very significant. Many students overestimate their ability to adjust to college:
For example:
- 75% of students are retained for the sophomore year
- 51.2% graduate with 5 years
This is quite understandable as high school and college are radically different environments with different expectations. Since the young adult has never been to college before, when he/she gets on campus there is a lot of learning that needs to happen quickly. While this is often very exciting and stimulating, there is also the reality that such a change can be stressful and difficult. During CTG, participants learn about the probable difficult areas of transition and what they can do to prepare for the challenges before these challenges come.
College transition is
defined as:
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Personal -Developing a secure identity and how one is feeling psychologically and physically during change
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Academic-Being internally energized by intellectual activity
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Social -Developing social supports
See the I-PASS Research Paper for more information about how these area are defined
The major themes that CTG addresses are for students to understand the high demands and low structure of the collegiate academic environment and to grasp the high degree of anonymity and low degree of privacy in the social system of college.