Transfer Student Experiences at a Four-Year University

In recent years attention has been concentrated on the experiences of traditional college students, with very little research or attention on the experiences of transfer students. The purpose of this causal comparative mixed-methods study was to describe the experiences of transfer students who engage in the experiential learning activities of service learning and/or internship activities at a four-year public Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the Inland Empire. Relationships were found between transfer students who participated in service learning and/or internship activities and those transfer students who did not participate in those activities on the following: level of satisfaction with their educational experience, current job/career, and sense of connectedness to the university, and beliefs about how much the university contributed to their acquisition of job- or work-related knowledge and skills. Predominant concepts regarding transfer students\u27 beliefs about what the university could do to help them be successful, were the implementation of a transfer student orientation and creating a transfer student center