ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of the processes involved in college impacts by focusing on the stages or sequences of experiences in college. Young men and women begin to prepare for the college experience before entering college. The extent of the entering freshman’s unclarity about his new environment can be noted by the retrospective reports of college students. More systematic evidence can be obtained about the nature of the expectations of entering freshmen by comparing their descriptions of the environment they are about to enter with that of the students already in the environment. Current evidence indicates that entering freshmen typically expect to meet heavy academic demands in college, and at the same time most of them expect a high degree of success. In general terms, the freshman in college is a novice in an unfamiliar social organization, and is therefore confronted with the values, norms, and role structures of a new social system and various new subsystems.
