Resumen de A comparative study of student success between first-time-in-college and first-time-transfer engineering students
So Yoon Yoon, Mónica Cortez, P. K. Imbrie, Teri Reed
This study is to explore characteristics of the first-time-in-college (FTIC) students and first-time-transfer (FTT) studentsand compare them in terms of their demographics, the first-year engineering (FYE) common course credits, andgraduation outcomes. The 2006 cohort students’ course credits and graduation status in engineering at a large southwestpublic university were tracked for 17 semesters through the data retrieved from the university archive. Descriptive statisticswere used to identify trends in the data from 1,989 FTIC versus 282 FTT students and inferential statistics were applied tocheck statistically significant differences between two groups and among subgroups. Apparent differences existed betweenFTIC and FTT students: FTT students showed comparable cumulative GPAs to FTIC students and better graduationoutcomes, such as higher six-year graduation rates and shorter time-to-graduation in engineering than FTIC students.Consideringthe samelearning environmentafterentrance to the institution,the better academicoutcomes of FTTstudentsimply unique success factors other than the difference in academic maturity. Therefore, identification of these uniquesuccess factors and reconstruction of each student population support systems can facilitate the success of both FTIC andFTT students.
