The GapWell 2024 College Survey Reveals Widespread Needs Among First Year Students
This spring more than 1,000 college students and parents of college students completed the 2024 GapWell College Survey, which focused on the students’ experience during their first year of college. More than 100 different colleges and universities are represented in the student responses.
The results paint a picture of the first-year college experience that is hard to ignore both in terms of the college student point of view and how greatly it differs from the parents' perspectives.
Below is a summary of some key findings.
Students Want & Need More Help Their First Year
75% of college students wish they had received more advice and help their first year, to navigate campus life and be successful. Needing this help contributed to high stress levels.
While the need for help was prevalent across lots of topics, seven stood out with more than 50% of students – and as many as 74% of students in some cases – selecting them as an area where help was needed.
The topics that the vast majority of students want and need more help on included the following:
studying more efficiently
managing time
managing money
which apps / tech to use
talking to professors
balancing schoolwork, other commitments and fun
planning big assignments
Students Don’t Feel Ready to Handle College Life on Day 1
A series of questions focused on when the students felt they had important skills to handle college life. Did they show up with these skills or did they have to develop them while in college?
On Day 1:
Only 31.6% of students felt they had self-confidence
Only 31.9% felt ready to handle a college workload
Only 43.8% of students felt they were able to handle adversity
Only 39.5% felt they were able to navigate socially
Those numbers are disturbingly low.
However, the first year on campus is a year of tremendous personal development.
By the end of that first year, at least 85% of students felt they had these life skills.
Unfortunately, without the extra help that they are asking for, they were left to “figure it out” on their own during this highly stressful year.
Students Experience A LOT of Stress Their First Year
82% of college students said they experienced A LOT of stress their first year.
Moreover, there was no material correlation between feeling prepared for college and experiencing a lot of stress your first year. The vast majority of students who said they were ready on Day 1 still experienced a lot of stress.
Unfortunately, the opposite held true as well. If you reported needing extra help in areas like managing time, studying efficiently, etc., then your stress levels were likely significantly above the average (84.0–88.5% v. 82.2%).
The Majority of Students Questioned Whether They’re at the Right School
61% of all college students said that during their first year they questioned whether they were at the right school.
For students at schools with fewer than 10K students, it was closer to 70%!
The differential on this response was dramatically different from the parents' response to the same question (as noted below).
Students want additional advice / help. But whose advice do they value?
Students value the advice of older students by a wide margin compared to other sources of advice.
93% of students valued advice from older students.
Older students are preferred by a wide margin when compared to parents and their peers.
Their university and online experts scored the lowest overall in terms of where students prefer to seek advice. While social media may be consuming substantial amounts of time for many college students, seeking advice related to first-year college experiences is clearly not part of that behavior.
Students are not taking advantage of university resources.
When asked how often they took advantage of university resources to get help in the areas identified above (managing time, studying more efficiently, etc.) 42% said "never," and an additional 34% said “once or twice.”
While nearly all universities offer programs, departments, specific curriculum, and services to support first year students, very few students take advantage of these institutional offerings.
Does the size of the school make a difference?
There were some interesting differences in the experiences of students who attended large schools (with more than 10,000 students) and small / mid-sized schools (with 10,000 or fewer students).
For example:
It takes longer for college students at large schools to learn to navigate socially. 35.4% higher incidence of students taking more than a year before they were “able to navigate socially.”
Students at large schools are less likely to question their fit: 69.7% of students at small schools had moments their first year where they “questioned whether they were at the right school.” For students at large schools the number was 50.4%
Students at larger schools are even less likely to take advantage of university resources. At larger universities, only 17.1% of students took advantage of them “somewhat” or “a lot,” whereas at smaller schools the rate was 29.3%.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PARENTS?
[SPOILER ALERT: PARENTS OFTEN DON’T KNOW THE FULL PICTURE.]
Parents don’t know the extent to which their children need help their first year.
Parents were given a list of 10 topics and asked if their child would have benefited from advice / help in any of these areas during the child’s first year on campus.
Only one topic had more than 50% of parents saying that their child could have benefited from help/advice: Studying more efficiently (and that was only by a margin of 2.6%).
The majority of students are seeking advice on 70% of the topics presented. With a stark contrast in perception, the majority of the parents felt it was only a single topic -- studying more efficiently. The parents clearly missed the mark on what first year students really want.
When given the choice of those SAME 10 areas and asked if they would have benefited from advice / help on that topic their first year, six of the 10 areas had more than 50% of students responding YES, and a seventh – getting organized - was split 50/50.
Even though the majority of parents felt their college students had nearly all of the first-year topics figured out, the number of additional topics submitted by parents vastly outnumbered the additional submissions by the college students.
Parents don’t know the extent to which their children are stressed their first year.
While more than 6 out of 10 parents felt their college students experienced A LOT of stress, the college students reported it to be more than 8 out of 10!
When asked if they experienced A LOT of stress their first year, 82% of students agreed. When asked that same question, 63.2% of parents thought their kids experienced A LOT of stress.
While all stress is not bad, too much can be overwhelming and unsustainable.
Parents don’t know the extent to which their children are questioning their college choice.
Only 26.2% of parents believed their college student had moments their first year where they “questioned whether their college was the right one for them.”
The parents were more than 50% below the students' reported perception on this telling question. That is a huge difference from the student reality.
When we asked students the same question, 61% responded affirmatively. For students at schools with less than 10,000 students, it was almost 70%!
Despite the high cost of college, the vast majority of parents feel they are getting their money’s worth
74.8% of parents felt that they were getting their money’s worth from the college / university their child attended.
Huge difference by parents on a pre-college "gap semester" v. a "semester abroad"
Only 18.9% of parents said they would have allowed their child to take a gap year before college, but 98.9% of parents said they would allow their child to study abroad during college.
Parents would love their children to "study abroad," but clearly not as part of a gap year before their first year of college.
The gap year movement unfortunately has a long way to go to overcome the stigma that clearly remains against thoughtful life experiences for young adults before college. Even though numerous studies have clearly documented the positive impact such experiences have on college student grade point averages and graduation rates, a meager 18.9% of parents would allow their child to take a gap before the start of college.
Students need help and say they want help, but is there a solution?
Nearly 75% of students and nearly 64% of parents surveyed agreed that first year students would benefit from “a weekly update with practical advice (tips and tricks) from more experienced college students and real experts” to help them navigate their college experience.
In response to this overwhelming need, GapWell is launching the GapWell Guide.
Designed for first year college students, the GapWell Guide sources practical advice, tips, personal stories and more from upper-class students across the country and delivers it directly to students’ phones every week. It’s what students are clearly telling us they want and need to make their first year on campus more successful.
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Survey Methodology
The survey was conducted between March 2024 and June 2024. Students and parents were given links to online surveys to complete to the best of their ability. No participant was compensated. However, participants were entered to win one of a handful of $25 gift cards. 552 current college students completed the survey, representing more than 100 schools across the U.S. and Canada. 470 parents of current college students or recent college graduates completed the survey. For purposes of analysis, “strongly agree” and “somewhat agree” were combined for certain questions to generate a holistic view of positive responses, and “strongly disagree” and “somewhat disagree” were combined for certain questions to generate a holistic view of negative responses.
Survey Abstract, Media Inquiries & Citations
The 2024 GapWell College Student Survey was launched to understand how well-prepared young adults were when they first arrive at college and throughout their first-year experience. Completed by students with at least a semester of college experience, the survey evaluates their readiness for college and identifies ways to make the transition smoother. GapWell aims to shed light on the “life skills” necessary for personal and professional success during this critical chapter. Additionally, the GapWell Guide, launching in August 2024, provides support for college students across various aspects of campus life.
For further details on the study or permission to cite statistics from the 2024 study, please contact media@gapwell.com.
Unauthorized reproduction of survey responses without proper citation, either in whole or in part, without written permission from GapWell is strictly prohibited.
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