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2018 Your First College Year Survey

The first year of college is a time for students to develop new habits and skills as they transition from secondary to postsecondary education. Overall, students had the most challenges in developing close friendships with their peers with 64.1% of survey respondents indicating they found this to be somewhat/very difficult. In comparison to the 2019 and 2020 YFCY data, only 32.6% and 38.7% of students, respectively, found it somewhat/very difficult to develop close friendships. Given that this percentage nearly doubled over the past two years, this finding illuminates the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on students’ ability to connect with peers at their schools. Most students (72.3%) found it somewhat/very easy to understand what their professors expected of them academically, but nearly half of students (49.6%) still found it somewhat/very difficult to adjust to the academic demands of college. Figure 1 shows the ease with which students adjusted to various aspects of college. One year into the pandemic, 93.7% of students, unsurprisingly, reported taking a course exclusively online. One in ten (11.8%) students felt very satisfied with the functionality of the online learning platform. Just over two-fifths of students (42.3%) felt satisfied, 26.5% felt neutral, and 19.1% felt dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Despite many students reporting feeling satisfied with the functionality of the online 2021 Your First College Year Survey