Launching Success: New Student Orientation
The transition to college presents a major challenge in a student's life. It requires leaving behind familiar routines and learning to navigate an unfamiliar environment with new social norms, academic expectations, and personal independence. Many first-year students struggle with this shift, and some ultimately leave college without completing their first year.
New student orientation plays a critical role in a successful transition by introducing students to available resources, setting institutional expectations, and fostering early community building. Research shows that new student orientation has a profound impact on student success and retention rates.
Whether students are online or on campus, traditional or non-traditional, first-time or transfer, a well-structured orientation sets the foundation for students to persist and succeed.
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Goals of New Student Orientation
Support Services
Access key institutional supports
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Financial aid
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Mental health services
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Academic supports
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Library services
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IT and technology services
Academic Guidance
Guiding course selections and educational pathways
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Academic advising
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Degree mapping
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Course registration
Campus Expectations
Standards for a safe community
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Campus safety
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Code of conduct
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Consent and Title IX education
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Emergency preparation
Community and Belonging
Connecting with peers & campus life
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Social orientation
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Peer connections
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Student life activities
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Clubs and organizations
Extended Approach: From Orientation to First-Year Experience (FYE)
Orientation is vital for student success, but overloading incoming students with information can backfire. Students arrive on campus already overwhelmed by the transition, and may not be ready to appreciate what they will need later in the year. As a result, institutions are increasingly moving away from a single one- or two-day event toward a phased, extended approach.
To operationalize this shift, the Community College Research Center (CCRC) promotes the Ask-Connect-Inspire-Plan (ACIP) framework—an onboarding approach designed to help students build momentum over their first weeks in college. With a core objective of improving student retention, the ACIP model drives engagement by helping students achieve clarity about their academic and career goals, connecting them with faculty, alumni, peers, and employers, and guiding them to design a comprehensive educational plan.
Spotlight: Penn State Altoona
Penn State Altoona spreads onboarding across three phases:
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New Student Orientation: Held prior to the term, this phase focuses on foundational steps: introducing campus resources, establishing initial academic goals, and building the first-semester course schedule.
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Welcome Week: Spanning the first several weeks of the semester, this phase provides a flexible "choose-your-own-adventure" model that lets students engage with campus culture, peer networks, and student organizations at their own pace.
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First-Year Seminar (FYS): Required for all incoming students, this semester-long credit course anchors the onboarding process. It provides sustained engagement with faculty while addressing critical success areas such as financial literacy, wellness, self-awareness, and long-term academic and career planning.
By extending orientation into the academic term, Altoona ensures information is delivered when students are ready to apply it during the course of the year.
Non-Traditional Students Orientation
For historically underserved and non-traditional student populations—including first-generation students, racial and ethnic minorities, adult learners, transfer students, and commuters—new student orientation serves as a critical bridge to college success. More than just an administrative "welcome week," targeted orientation programs for non-traditional learners directly influence new student persistence, academic self-efficacy, and a sense of belonging, all of which arecritical elements in student retention.
First-generation students often experience a culture gap regarding academic jargon, financial aid processes, credit hours, and faculty interaction expectations. Targeted orientations can help them decode this hidden curriculum.
Inclusion of dedicated family orientation tracks give parents who did not attend college practical ways to support their students, thus mitigating feelings of home-versus-campus value conflict.
Demystifying the "Hidden Curriculum"
Integration and Inclusion
Research shows that students who feel connected are significantly more likely to persist to their second year. Targeted orientation cohorts, such as identity-based bridge programs or multicultural welcome tracks can help student connect with peers similar to them and build ties that can reduce imposter feelings and improve chances of retention. Structured orientation activities that integrate institutional leaders emphasizing inclusion can further help non-traditional students feel welcomed and help retention rates.
Practical and Flexible
Adult learners and student caregivers parents tend to have distinct needs from traditional-aged residential students. Non-traditional students prioritize time management, career alignment, childcare support, and evening/online academic support. Specialized orientation equips them with concrete operational roadmaps. Hybrid or online orientation models allow adult learners juggling full-time jobs or family obligations to digest critical institutional information at their own pace.
Online Student Orientation
The share of online learners in higher education is growing, but rising enrollments masks a risk: these students are more likely to stop out. Online students are more commonly non-traditional—adult learners, first-generation students, and caregivers—who need to balance multiple family and personal obligations at once. Moreover, many of them are enrolled part-time, a status that NSC data links to lower persistence rates. While online students are more likely to face significant obstacles, they also have fewer opportunities to build community and a sense of belonging, both crucial to retention.
While there is no scholarly consensus on what an online student orientation should look like, it is nonetheless clear that an effective onboarding experience is vital to the online learner’s success. And yet, a new student orientation for online students is not commonly required, and the 2024 CHLOE 9 report by Quality Matters found that only about a third of surveyed institutions adapted their orientation to the unique needs of online students.
The growth of distance learning in higher education is no longer a projection. In 2024, more than a quarter of undergraduates were enrolled exclusively online, with another quarter enrolled partially online. These students often have unique needs. Rather than replicating traditional support services online, institutions should intentionally design targeted services integrated into the online learner journey.
In-person or virtual?
What is the preferred format for an online student orientation? Virtual orientations remove barriers to access and thus increase participation, providing online learners with the flexibility they need. Online learning modules can be completed at an individual pace, while synchronous meetings can assist the formation of social connections.
While most institutions hold the orientation for distance learners virtually, and often synchronously, some institutions opt for an on-campus experience. While acknowledging the challenges involved in bringing online students to campus, recent evidence generally finds advantages for in-person orientation on social connection, and student experience. They provide an opportunity to ensure that students have the technology and access they need for classes, build connections with key personnel such as faculty, advisors, and support staff, and more easily build a community with peers.
Orientation Best Practices
Extend Beyond a Single Event
Incorporate Advising
Moving from a one- or two-day event to a welcome series or longer first-year experience (FYE) sustains momentum and provides longer term support.
Don't wait for your incoming students to schedule advising meetings. Instead, integrate advising into orientation program. Advisors will establish a relationship with incoming students, help them develop a plan and see their own path for success.
Campus Incorporation
Student success and retention hinges on the development of relationships throughout the institution, with faculty, advisors, librarians, tutors, student affairs professionals, the financial aid staff, mental health counselors, and administrative staff. Inviting these personnel to participate in orientation programming encourages a full-campus integration, creates a broader institutional commitment to student success, and helps incoming students to feel welcomed and oriented on campus from day 1.
Peer Mentorship
Coupling incoming students with more senior peers is a powerful support tool. Upperclassmen mentors offer authentic lived experience, social validation, and real-time guidance on navigating campus life. It promotes community building and is especially valuable to students from underserved populations.
Continuous Program Calibration
Gamify the Experience
Ensure a regular feedback loop to assess the effectiveness of the orientation program and implement updates at regular intervals. Survey students right after orientation to gauge their experience, and check in again at the end of the semester and end of year to measure the impact.
Engaging and fun games could boost engagement, support community building, and improve orientation outcomes. Group scavenger hunt across campus to find key offices, resources, and personnel is one example of how gamifying the experience can lift engagement and introduce team building.
Further Reading
Burgette, J. E., and Magun-Jackson, S. (2008), "Freshman Orientation, Persistence, and Achievement: A Longitudinal analysis." Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 10(3), 235–263.
Fitz-Walter, Z., et al, "A Model for Running Effective Educational Scavenger Hunts During Campus Orientation to Onboard New University Students." Student Success Journal, 16(2), 2025
Stoebe, A., and Grebbing, R. (2020), "The Effect of New Student Orientations on the Retention of Online Students." Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 23(2).
Strayhorn, T. L. (2019), College Students' Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Tinto, V. (1993), Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Ward-Roof, J. A. (Ed.) (2010), Designing Successful Transitions: A Guide for Orienting Students to College (3rd ed.). National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina.
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