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In Canada little research has been conducted on those who are the first in their families to attend university. Cultural reproduction theory suggests that such students would be less likely to engage in the type of activities that, according to the college impact model, contribute to academic achievement. In order to test these and other possibilities a longitudinal survey‐based study of domestic and international students was conducted at four Canadian universities. Overall it was found that university experiences did vary by the educational background of parents; however, such experiences were not always of consequence for academic achievement.

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Traditional models of educational outcomes relate academic achievement to university experiences controlling for background characteristics, like former levels of achievement. In these models, most of the variance in the outcome under consideration is explained not by experiences inside the university but by background characteristics, such as prior levels of academic achievement. In many instances the contribution of institutional experiences to outcomes under consideration is small. To date, researchers have not included sense of coherence (SOC) among background characteristics. In the current study traditional models are modified to include SOC as a possible contributor to first year academic achievement among domestic and international students with English and other first languages at four Canadian universities. It is found that a model including SOC better fits data for commuter and residence students than a model in which SOC is omitted. Although the effect of SOC on first year academic achievement is small, it is larger than the effects of some institutional experiences. As a result, SOC should be included in attempts to explain first year academic achievement.