Engineering and computer science community college transfers and native freshmen students: Relationships among participation in extra-curricular and co-curricular activities, connecting to the university campus, and academic success

Research studies have shown the importance of the relationship between “a sense of belonging” and successfully adjusting to college life for undergraduate students. Few studies, however, have compared if native freshmen and transfer students connect to the campus in similar ways. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among participation in social and academic engagement activities, social integration, and academic success for students graduating with engineering or computer science Bachelor´s degrees at a large, public university. An additional area of interest was the role of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) in making friends on campus. Using analysis of variance, 1,042 responses were analyzed from senior exit survey questions and cumulative GPA from student records. Students who reported higher levels of social integration on average had higher GPAs. Seven activities were found to be strongly associated with social integration for native freshmen, and three activities for transfer students. Three activities - organizations in their major, experiential learning, and intramural sports - were common to both groups. Surprisingly, given the cohort experience structure of UREs, no significant relationship was found for social integration in this study. This finding may be limited by the sample size or other factors such as self-selection bias.