Adjustment to University Life: Freshman Liberal Arts Students' Expectations and Experiences of Campus Life

Abstract

The purposes of the present study were to identify multiple domains of expectations and experiences of campus life, and empirically examine their effects on adjustment to university life. The results of a preliminary survey of 84 university students were used to investigate expectations and experiences of campus life and develop the final items. Participants in the main survey were 316 university freshman. Factor analysis identified 4 domains: free time, friendship, events, and study. Paired £-tests revealed a gap between expectations and experiences in all 4 domains. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis identified interactions between expectations and experiences in the free time and friendship domains. The interactions indicated that expectations were negatively correlated with apathetic tendencies when more experiences were reported. The main results suggest that if freshmen found that they had more free time at the university than they had expected, their tendency to be apathetic increased. The implications of these findings for first-year university education were discussed.