Academic and Social Expectations of Incoming College Students

Abstract

Students’ beliefs about themselves and their abilities shape their first-semester college experience. Previous studies have connected growth mindset and grit with increased graduation and retention relates, but mindset is likely to relate to other factors besides academic performance and re-enrollment. This article examines incoming students’ beliefs about their intelligence, social skills, work habits, and effort. Students (N = 332) also rated their likely reactions to a variety of hypothetical academic and social situations they might encounter during their first year of college. Our goal is to expand the conversation about the “college-ready” student mindset and develop a more accurate picture of the various beliefs students have when they enter college. The results demonstrate significant ethnicity, gender, and ACT score differences across the major measures, but not first-generational status differences. These results suggest that student support programming should take into consideration variations in student mindset.

Changing misconceptions of abilities: The impact of a brief mindset refutation text intervention

“…These studies suggest that having a growth mindset can increase academic success and resilience when students are faced with failure. Thus, colleges and universities need to determine how to leverage the knowledge that having a genuine growth mindset—and not a merely a performative growth mindset, which could occur based on the ubiquity of the theory in K‐12 schools (Korstange et al, 2020)—is crucial for academic success, resilience, and authentic belief that one's intelligence is malleable.…”

“…Second, educational psychology skills (e.g., self‐regulation and self‐control, holding one's attention in the face of distractions; Moran, 2018) and understanding the differences in growth and fixed mindsets are necessary for students to succeed in college. One of those crucial lessons, especially for first‐year students, is the importance of a growth mindset, especially for those students who do not already have growth‐oriented beliefs (Korstange et al, 2020). As demonstrated in this study, mindsets are malleable, and many different activities can influence an individual's attributions and goals.…”

“…First‐year college students experience many curricular and co‐curricular challenges as they transition to higher education. These include more demanding coursework (Korstange et al, 2020); the necessity of critical thinking (Moran, 2018); and, perhaps most important, the need to adapt to and overcome failure or poor performance (Dweck, 2006; Walton & Wilson, 2018) as they progress through their first year. These sometimes unstated and undiscussed elements are critical to a students’ postsecondary academic success and constitute elements of the so‐called “hidden curriculum” (Smith, 2013).…”

Imagined future teacher self at the point of entry to teacher education

“…Often there is a mismatch between students' beliefs, expectations and the academic and life demands they face. Those who are more collegeready and have a so-called growth mindset show a higher success rate compared to those who have a fixed mindset (Dweck, 2006;Korstange et al, 2020). Members of the earlier group are more successful because they believe that their academic abilities and social skills are changeable and, therefore, look at challenges as opportunities to grow.…”

Intentional Interactions and Identity Development: Perspectives on Education?

“…The idea of verifying this theory is at the center of the current study, as previous work detailed later, has identified that unintentional actions can influence the behavior of others. These unintentional interactions can also be critical in identifying the perceptions of the collegiate experience as students arrive on campus [5], and in turn, can frame a student's perception of what college is or should be, impacting retention and satisfaction [6].…”