CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The main findings of this research is that all students at Hunter, regardless of whether they were high achievers, active adapters, or low achievers, are provided with little support in terms of navigating the academic and administrative environments in the college.Throughout the focus group discussions and interviews, students repeatedly commented on the importance of being “pro-active” at Hunter and how they felt like they had to do things on their own, with no one to guide them.

Although all students recognize that they are "on their own" at Hunter, the lack of support has themost severe impact on the low achievers. At residential colleges, informal mechanisms operate to fill in some of the gaps in students’ abilities to navigate the institution; at Hunter the relative paucity of social interaction among students inhibits such informal flows from being very effective.Higher achieving students come to college prepared to take responsibility for their own education.They quickly find ways to navigate Hunter in a successful manner. Academically, this is characterized by activities such as: taking the initiative to seek clarification of material presented in a lecture hall in which questions were discouraged or waiting three hours to speak to the one academic advisor assigned to each department.Similarly, active adapters learn from early failure that they need, for example, to get to know faculty members and prepare class assignments in advance.In contrast, the lower achieving students come to college without the requisite study skills nor the coping mechanisms to acquire them.

The mechanisms in place to help students with academic skills are, according to the students, insufficient.For example, most students described the walk-in Writing Center as unhelpful. More importantly, walk-in help centers are most likely to be used (or at least tried) by those students who are most pro-active.Hunter could help these students in two ways.First, ORSEM would be enhanced by adding a study skills component.One student suggested that ORSEM teach note taking. In addition, ORSEM could cover basic skills like preparing a research paper, studying for different kinds of exams and the value of working in study groups.If the Hunter Administration were to implement this suggestion, it would be advisable to poll students on what additional material they would find useful.

Faculty, particularly those who teach introductory classes, can also help the low achievers.Faculty should encourage questions, either in class or after class.Since students may be shy about asking questions in front of other students, faculty should encourage students to visit them during office hours.This research shows that low achievers and active adapters often need to be informed about employing certain behaviors that can help them.

Further, all faculty face the challenge of teaching students in every class who are at very different levels of preparation and readiness.Knowing these differences exist will permit faculty to devise effective strategies for teaching students at these different levels.Further research about whether such strategies are effective will be worth undertaking in the future.

These differences in student orientation also affect how students deal with administrative issues.In particular, while all students complained about being closed out of courses and lack of assistance from Student Services, the high achievers seem better able to navigate the system in order to fulfill requirements.Low achievers were more likely to take the courses that were available. This is a critical issue because students who are unable to get into courses that they need to fulfill distribution or major requirements are prevented from graduating as quickly as they might like.This places a disproportionate burden on low-income students who may already be going to school part-time to accommodate a full or part-time job.This could help explain why so few Hunter students are able to graduate within 6 years and bears further investigation.

Furthermore, students may be leaving Hunter due to being closed out of required courses.Indeed, three of the seven students who are considering transferring out of Hunter cited unavailable classes as the primary reason that they were thinking of leaving.No doubt the Hunter administration has legitimate budgetary reasons for limiting course offerings.However, given the increased size of the student body, limiting course offerings may be unintentionally compromising Hunter's ability to fulfill its mission.

Additional research could help the TLC develop programs for faculty to better reach the low achievers.More research is needed on this group.A qualitative study could highlight the ways in which low achievers’ interactions with faculty and other students and their study skill sets differ from those of high achievers.In addition to interviews, this study should include field work so that exchanges could be observed. A survey could identify what percentage of students fit this category and to what extent they are "dropping-out" or transferring out of Hunter.This study could also help

define these students demographically and psycho-socially.