While many colleges and universities focus on assisting first-year undergraduate students to be successful both academically and socially, community college transfer students can sometimes feel like a forgotten population. Most new student resources, events, and programming are designed to assist first-year students in their college transition, leaving community college transfer students to typically find their own means of adapting to their new four-year institutions. This qualitative study explored the experiences of Iowa community college transfer students between the ages of 18 to 24, and the factors that impacted their social integration, and academic persistence at their new four-year institution. The theoretical framework of Braxton and Reason’s Revised Theory of Student Persistence in Residential Colleges and Universities guided this study. Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews of 15 undergraduate transfer students from a single academic college at a four-year, doctoral granting research intensive institution.
The findings revealed several themes that encapsulated the challenges and successes these students faced in their college transitions and the impacts that these had on their social integration and academic persistence. While many factors contributed to the degree of social integration they felt within the university community, most students did not attribute their academic persistence to their ability to socially integrate. Findings from this study suggest that centralized transfer resources, transfer-specific orientation programming, and student clubs or organizations, could assist transfer students in their social integration and academic persistence at their four-year institution.