How Do Peer Connections Relate to First-Year Student Success?

[sarajo_lee]

Several classic works on college student development emphasize the importance of interactions to student development, learning, and success. To that end, many institutions put significant effort and resources towards efforts to help students build positive peers connections. Intuitively, higher education professionals understand the importance of positive peer connections. However, it is crucial to highlight data and research to back up these stories and theories. This note explores peer connections in first-year college students using responses from a national survey of over 25,000 first-year college students from nearly 30 institutions in the United States.

Key Questions:

1. To what degree did first-year students report making connections with peers?
2. Were there differences in peer connections across different populations?
3. How did peer connections relate to the first-year student experience?

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