Navigating the transition to university

Navigating the transition to university: Who thrives?

For those working in academia, parents, or if you are a student yourself, the end of summer signals not only the loss of sunshine but the start of the new academic year. For new students, the move from school/college to university life is often surrounded by unknowns and challenges across academic, psychological, and social domains. It is and should be a very exciting time, but it is also pretty daunting to many.

Understanding the transition

We know that the jump from school to university is not just about more difficult discipline, knowledge and academic expectations. It often also means living independently for the first time, forming new social circles, and managing a whole new level of personal responsibility (e.g. learning how to turn the washing machine on!).

Navigating this transition period has implications for academic performance, wellbeing and ultimate degree success. If the transition does not go well, it can lead to a decline in psychological wellbeing and increased stress, sometimes even resulting in serious mental health issues. Despite conventional wisdom that 'everyone knows' the potential challenges and how we can help in this pivotal time, the scientific research on the transition period of starting university is actually rather limited.

Our project work

As part of our project, we conducted a rigorous systematic review of the studies in the psychological and educational literature that explored what helps or hinders student success during this crucial transition period.

Our review aimed to explore how researchers were defining student success and bring together all the scattered research on personal risk and protective factors that influence first-year university success in the transition. The focus was on personal, not institutional factors, to pinpoint what we can control and improve to make this transition smoother.

Key findings

The review highlighted 55 studies examining various factors impacting success during the transition. We only included studies that:

• Reported quantitative correlation statistics for the level of association or relatedness between a measured psychological factor and a success metric
• Were longitudinal in design (i.e. both the outcome and the psychological construct in question were assessed at different timepoints)
• Sampled 'traditional' first year university students (i.e. 'young' students coming straight from school, rather than mature students, international students etc) 

The retained studies reflect data from over 38,000 participants covering 12 countries (primarily North America, only five used UK samples).

Outcomes

Thirty-four distinct outcomes (plus a few subscales) were identified. Understandably, different stakeholders will be interested in different outcomes. However, when trying to identify how we can help more students to succeed in this transition, a lack of consistency here is a real problem. Without consensus at this level, it is difficult to move the research forward.

From this work, we would posit that academic achievement (in reference to previous achievement), general mental wellbeing, and engagement with university life encompassing academic, social, and personal aspects would be a sensible, holistic way of understanding success in the transition.

Success as academic achievement

Given the volume of success metrics, to aid our exploration of the risk and protective factors, we split these into two categories. When success is measured by academic achievement outcomes, 77 unique factors were identified as central to transition success.

These factors were consolidated thematically, identifying four domains: Adjustment/integration, academic, health, demographic and background, and psychosocial factors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of the strongest relationships with the success outcomes came from factors within the adjustment and academic domains.

Psychosocial success outcomes

When looking at success with psychosocial outcomes, 96 salient factors were identified. 

The consolidation of these factors identified similar thematic domains: Demographic and background, academic/adjustment, social, health and wellbeing, coping, and self-factors.

In this sphere, the points of comparison were minimal, highlighting a real lack of replication occurring in the research body. This places limitations on the confidence we can have with any conclusions we try to make about the most or least salient factors.

Discussion points

Overall, the complexity of making scientific sense of this area of research is evident in the huge volume of unique factors that have been proposed as important constructs that impact the likelihood of a successful transition to university.

A key challenge with so many factors is to understand whether they are truly different constructs or just the same factor with a different name (e.g. how distinct is 'social adjustment' from 'social integration'). In research, we refer to the 'Jingle-Jangle fallacy' and constructs being sister- or parent-constructs in order to understand these conceptual overlaps. In practice, we want to ensure that holistically our students are thriving and need to ensure that our research is practically minded, ensuring that it translates to practice.

We believe that our systematic review and categorisation has helped synthesise and simplify the literature to the point it can be more useful for educational psychologists, educators, and student support services, or just anyone trying to help a student through the transition.

Using this information

While the knowledge gained from this comprehensive systematic review is clearly an important development, knowing these key factors is just step one. The real goal from an educational psychology perspective is to develop effective strategies to help students thrive during their transition to university. This project is hoping to continue working towards formulating a transition support package, but in the meantime, there are some implementable ideas based on our findings.

If, as a psychologist or education professional/practitioner, you work with those who are starting university, remember that preparation and support are key. Encourage closer liaison between feeder schools/colleges and universities. Work with universities to develop and establish programmes that address these critical factors that influence the likelihood of a successful transition and that can help set the environment for a student to flourish. Proactive support and preparation are key, but continuing support and a welcoming environment throughout this critical period is essential.

If you are a student, seek out resources and build a support network to help you navigate this hugely exciting yet potentially challenging time.

Moving forward

The transition to university is a pivotal time in a student's life. By focusing on the identified risk and protective factors, universities can develop targeted interventions to help students succeed. This review serves as a foundation for future research and practical applications, aiming to make the transition smoother and more manageable for all students.

Together, as psychologists led by evidence-based scientific literature, we can work with our secondary and higher education institutions to help create a more supportive and successful university experience for everyone.