[ORIENTATION]: College requires new academic approach

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.