Transfer Shock and Resilience: How Transfer-Related GPA Drop and Rebound Predict Student Departure from a Flagship University Campus

Abstract

As they navigate the social and academic expectations of a new college, transfer students commonly suffer “transfer shock,” or a sudden drop in GPA. However, little is known about why some students suffer transfer shock, why some bounce back, and the consequences in terms of student retention. This analysis of over 25,000 transfer students (N = 25,000) at a large flagship university finds an average first-term drop of −0.30 GPA points, but the impact of this shock on student departure is dependent on initial GPA, the steepness of the drop, and the student's ability to rebound in their second term. To support transfer student retention and graduation, sending institutions can help students to pre-appraise the potential setback as normal and temporary, while receiving institutions can provide proactive outreach to transfers who arrive with a GPA below 2.0 or who suffer a GPA drop steeper than −0.50 in their first term.

The Vertical Transfer Pipeline and Its Leaks: Tracking Students From Associate’s Programs to Bachelor’s Degrees

“…The lack of a high frequency of transfer shock suggests that the term transfer shock may be ill-advised because it may imply that transfer students' GPAs generally decrease in the first posttransfer semester (Gentsch et al, 2022), as many bachelor's-college faculty believe (Rabinowitz et al, 2023). As in Jaggars et al (2023), our findings did show that the greater the transfer shock, the less likely students were to persist in a bachelor's program and to graduate with a bachelor's degree.…”

“…Other studies, however, have not found strong evidence of transfer shock (e.g., Aulck & West, 2017). A recent study of more than 25,000 students who had transferred to a large, flagship university, almost three quarters of whom were White, found that 63% of the sample experienced a GPA drop (transfer shock) in the semester following transfer, and the larger the GPA drop, the more likely a student was to leave college (Jaggars et al, 2023).…”