First-Generation Students and College Choice

The results of a fall 2005 survey of the incoming first-year class finds numerous differences between first-generation students and other students, particularly in how they decide which school to attend and in what they assume will be necessary financially to afford to stay.

The CIRP survey has been conducted annually by the University of California–Los Angeles’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) for nearly 40 years. This year’s results indicate that while half of first-generation students said they attend colleges within 50 miles of home, only 35 percent of other students said they do.

Encouragement from adults appears to be slightly more important to first-generation students. Twenty-one percent of first-generation students said mentor encouragement was a very important reason they decided to go to college, compared with 15 percent of other students. Forty-seven percent of first-generation students said parental encouragement was a very important reason for attending college, compared to 43 percent of other students.

The differences followed the students into enrollment. Nearly 37 percent of first-generation students say there’s a decent chance that they will work full-time while in college, compared to 25 percent of other students. Nearly 31 percent of first-generation students say they will live off campus in their first college year, compared to only 16 percent of other students.

The free report and accompanying PowerPoint slides are available through HERI’s website at www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/norms05.html.

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