Display 0463:    Freshmen Report College Selection Process

From the CIRP Freshman Study*
% of freshmen rating college selection process items this year.

**   Item was locally administered only, so national norms are not available.
*     During fall terms in recent years, SSU has participated in a national study of college freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, known as the "CIRP Freshman Survey".  A lengthy survey instrument, inquiring about over 300 issues, is administered by faculty in SSU's Freshman orientation course during the first two weeks of class.  Completed survey instruments are returned to UCLA for processing and findings are returned to SSU's Office of Institutional Research & Planning, which, in turn, reports the findings to University stakeholders for planning purposes.  Accordingly, all findings are based on students' self-reported data.

In a typical year, nearly 500 institutions and a quarter million students contribute to the study nationally.  At SSU, approximately 300 students participate annually.   Results are not always exactly comparable across institutions and years because different institutions survey their students differently in different years and the sample responding is not technically a scientifically random one.  But the study has been on-going for over 30 years and the number of participants is sufficiently large that results are generally considered highly reflective of the whole freshman class, nationally.