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UCLA’s incoming freshmen are without question some of the finest students in the nation. The average high school GPA of these students is a 4.27 and their mean SAT score is 2010. A majority of UCLA freshmen enter with an average of 19 Advanced Placement and honors courses.

Despite their high GPAs and test scores, however, our freshmen enter UCLA with little understanding of the expectations in college. In high school, students are trained to think of knowledge as a collection of “right answers” or mastery of particular subjects in isolation from one another. Students are often daunted and confused when they arrive in a university environment, where scholarly work is often interdisciplinary and many moral, social and scientific questions do not lend themselves to clear solutions.

Freshmen also tend to have an imperfect understanding of the complex world they inhabit. This is in part due to the fact that most first-year students are 18-year-olds with a limited range of experience and knowledge. Most of this year’s incoming class, for example, was born in 1989 and consequently has never been concerned about 1984 or found anything terribly futuristic about 2001. These students will enroll in classes where there is an expectation that they have some understanding of history, a familiarity with a range of literary texts and philosophical ideas, and an appreciation of some of the key concepts and ways of knowing peculiar to the natural sciences.

Whatever the content of the knowledge students bring with them from high school, freshmen will confront a faculty that expects them to have certain “habits of mind” essential to success in a research university, i.e., an ability to think critically, solve problems and clearly communicate. Other important skills include an inquisitive nature; a willingness to accept criticism and learn from it; and an ability to search, select, organize and ethically manage relevant information from a variety of sources. While incoming freshmen have begun to develop these habits in high school, they frequently need to hone them further to excel.

Aside from knowing there is a certain cachet associated with attending a research university such as UCLA, few freshmen have a clear idea of what this institution is, how it differs from small liberal arts colleges, and what scholars working in it do to discover, create and evaluate new knowledge. Added to this lack of awareness is an almost complete lack of understanding about the pedagogical philosophies that underlie university curricula, i.e., the various course requirements for general education, majors, minors and elective study. Rather than looking at their time in college as a forced march through a checklist of required course work, incoming freshmen need to take the time to learn about the rich intellectual resources and research opportunities that are available to them, as well as how to satisfy their various course requirements in ways that will advance their academic, personal and professional development.

With these various educational difficulties in mind, UCLA has initiated a number of curricular offerings aimed at assisting our incoming freshmen with their transition from high school to college. These offerings include the Freshman Cluster Program, Fiat Lux Freshman Seminars and classes about the undergraduate experience. These are designed to provide first-year students with cornerstone experiences that will familiarize them with the mission and practices of the research university and provide them with the skills and general knowledge to succeed at UCLA and in their future capacities as citizens and professionals.

Kendrick is the coordinator of the Freshman Cluster Program.

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