The research paper I read is called Expectation and Reality in Freshman Adjustment to College. The paper discusses the “freshman myth” which refers to the unreasonably positive expectations freshmen have of college both academic and non-academic. Additionally, this myth applies to transfer students although the “expectation and reality” align more closely likely because transfer students already have some experience with college. Overall, the findings show that students with a much higher expectation of their first year at the college, regardless of whether they’re a first year or a transfer, are much less involved in student activities and underperform compared to their peers. Interestingly, the difference between expectation and reality for students is different at each school. The two schools researched in this paper are Clark University and College of the Holy Cross. Clark has noticed a more drastic difference in student positive expectations and student compared to Holy Cross. A possible expectation may be the environment at each school since Holy Cross is a religious school and is described as “one big family.” For the most part, I find the paper pretty convincing. I am, however, curious how they conducted the research and what their metric for student “expectations” and “reality” were. Besides that, the research makes sense and I appreciate the explanation they created for why Holy Cross has a less drastic freshman myth than Clark.

After reading this paper, I realized my group forgot about the housing experience for first years. We considered the design a lot from our perspectives as sophomores and seniors, and did not consider a design that also pays attention to first years. As first years, students are less likely to be in a concrete friend group the first few months of school. It would therefore be helpful to give them the opportunity to expand their event flares to all first year students and not just those living in their “neighborhood” (which in our case is either Frosh Quad or Mission Hill). This offers a more diverse group of people for first years to meet and actually bridges the communication gap between Mission Hill and Frosh Quad students since the two don’t interact as much because of the physical distance. I also think we did design features that’s improved upon what this paper discusses. First years are often trying to mingle with others to figure out what group they want to be in. Having the event and event flare features actually help with publicizing events – especially niche ones – so that first years can meet other first years that share similar interest.