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In the United States today only 47.6% of students graduate from the college or university at which they first enrolled (Durhams, 2000). The other 52.4% transfer to other colleges or drop out of the higher education system. Why is this happening? One college student answers the question this way: “For some reason, this college isn’t exactly what I had pictured, so I am not really happy here” (Boyer, 1987, p. 45). This quote epitomizes one of the reasons new students cite for leaving college: unmet expectations. “Too often we forget that students come to us with uninformed expectations about college learning and college lifeanother factor contributing to attrition” (Levitz & Noel, 1989, pp. 68). Bean (1990) agreed “one fairly constant finding is that students leave school because they do not fit in. They may not fit in socially or academically or religiously or economically or for some other reasons, they leave because the school is not a good match for their needs” (p. 149). Students form their expectations of college from many sources, including popular media, parents, friends, high school counselors, and indirect and direct communication from the university. Among these factors, the most direct one that an individual institution can influence is its own intentional communications with students. Given the evidence that unmet expectations are one of the reasons students cite for leaving a particular university, what are institutions intentionally doing to help students form more realistic expectations about what they will find at their institution? Research examining college student attrition advises that the first year student’s most critical transition period occurs during the first semester, therefore programs and services designed to combat student attrition should be front-loaded (Tinto, 1988). However, even before the first year student attends a class, the university has two opportunities to convey realistic expectations of college life: the campus visit and the summer orientation program. Both programs are ideally positioned to purposively modify and shape student expectations about the university experience. The campus visit is a variable that predicts college selection and is a tool used by students during the college choice process. Gasperetti (1974) concluded that “the campus visit has a vital role to play in the decision making process for new applicants. Indeed, it is the fundamental step for an eventual commitment to apply for admissions to college by many students” (p. 19). While a number of studies substantiate the

The Role of the Campus Visit and the Summer Orientation Program in the Modification of Student Expectations About College