Adjusting to the social aspects of a new environment and navigating the bureaucratic waters of credit allocation are not the only struggles that transfer students face, according to the latest National Survey of Student Engagement, an annual study of undergraduate students nationwide. The survey found that most transfers participate far less in extracurricular activities on college campuses. However, their findings do not seem to hold true at Tufts.
According to statistical analysis based on the questioning of 133,000 participants, all seniors, from 643 colleges and universities, transfer students are significantly less likely to engage in "high impact" involvement (categorized as a "culminating senior experience," studying abroad, an internship or research with a professor) than "native" students, described in the survey as those who remain enrolled at the same institution for the entirety of their undergraduate education. The largest gap between the population of transfer students (divided into "horizontal" from four-year colleges and "vertical" from community colleges) was in the percentage of students who studied abroad; 20 percent of the "native" sample engaged in an academic program abroad, compared to just seven percent of "vertical" transfers and 15 percent of "horizontal" transfers.
Though no data was collected concerning extracurricular activities as a whole beyond so-called "high impact" involvement, the study sheds light on the overall transfer students' transition and potential barriers in the way of their participation in activities outside of a classroom setting. Many Tufts transfer students said that the study is not a reflection of their own experiences pertaining to extracurricular involvement, though none of the transfer students interviewed categorized their own socialization and adaptation as entirely smooth.
"There are some obvious difficulties," said junior Eugenia Lee, who writes a blog about her transfer experience for the admissions office. "I obviously don't have a lot of connections or relationships with professors, but any time I've wanted to get involved with something, I've only had people be incredibly receptive and welcoming."
Still, Lee noted that with the exception of her blog, which she started after a friend's referral, she felt that she had to put in more effort for extracurricular activities. "Anything I got involved with was a result of my actively searching for things to do, not because someone had suggested it to me," she said.
Amy Hopkins, a freshman, cited her extracurricular activities as crucial to her integration process.
"I definitely owe it to the cross country team for giving me a sense of belonging from the start," she said. Thanks to the cross country and track teams, Hopkins found it easy to have a social life, regarding the teams as her main social networks.
Lara Vancans, a junior who transferred to Tufts last year, said that an obvious common thread among her and her fellow transfers is that they all are willing to put in extra effort to ensure they have the best experience possible.
"When you screw up your first choice of college, the fear of getting it wrong again is huge," she said.
Vancans did not waste any time getting involved; in fact, she attended the first auditions for a play that came up.
"[We] had the benefit of already knowing what we wanted out of our college experience," she said. "I think freshmen might be a little more up in the air about their interests, but we sort of knew. We're like freshmen on fast-forward. We have to make up for lost time."
Vancans found her transfer status to be helpful in engaging in extracurricular activities rather than burdensome. "Everyone was really interested in who I was and where I came from," she said. "I knew I had to get involved in order to branch out and meet people."
Vancans considers her level of involvement an attribute of the Tufts student body in general, rather than that of a transfer student seeking to socialize and acclimate.
"People at Tufts are motivated and passionate about things, transfer or not," she said. "I think Tufts lets in the same types of students as transfers as they let in as freshmen, so we're bound to get involved one way or another. There was an added pressure in that I knew I only had three years instead of four, but that was about it.
"The only time being a transfer is frustrating is when you discover things too late in order to be involved with them," Vancans continued. Completing her freshman year at another university prevented Vancans from participating in the Institute for Global Leadership, she said. Still, Vancans considers her transfer experience to be a great one.
"It wasn't a road paved with friendless nights and exclusion from activities," she said. "Quite the opposite, actually."
Hopkins, Lee and Vancans all credit the Tufts Transfer Student Alliance, spearheaded by senior Mike Brown, with easing the transfer process. The Alliance has been active for a year, Brown said, but has only been an official student group on campus as of last week.
Brown and the Alliance organized the first-ever Transfer Student Orientation this year and have established a Web site for the group, www.tuftstransfers.com. The site's "advice column" repeatedly cites extracurricular involvement as imperative to a successful transfer process.
"I think that, from knowing the transfers here at Tufts, the transfers that [the NSEE] refers to would absolutely be the exception rather than the rule," Brown said. "They are phenomenally driven, as one would have to be in order to uproot their lives to switch schools, especially to a school like Tufts. The transfers who come to Tufts have a very ‘don't talk about it, be about it' type of attitude. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here."
