The Effect of Counselling on the Academic Performance of College Students

Introduction: The adjustment difficulties of college students have been an emerging issue. Many studies have proved that the adjustment difficulties like appetite disturbance, concentration problems and depression are most evident in freshmen. To help college students in resolving their adjustment issues, we made efforts in the form of establishing a counselling system to provide intervention to the students, so that their social and emotional problems did not interfere with their academic performances, for the current study. We chose to examine the relationship between the college counselling experience and the academic performance in a sample of freshmen. Aim: To explore the relationship and the effect of counselling on the academic performance of college students. Objective: 1. To find the relationship between the academic performance and counselling. 2. To find the relationship between the number of sessions and the academic performance. Material and Methods: Fifty Four First MBBS college students of the SBMCH 2007-2008 batch, who underwent face to face individual intake interviews with college faculty members, were given questionnaires and the analysis was based on their response to the questions and their academic performance. Result: This study showed that there was an increase in the average marks by about 15%-25% among 43% of the students and by about 10% -15% of marks among 13% of the students. There was no marked improvement among 31% of them and there was no change in 4% of the students. The second part of the study showed that the number of sessions correlated positively with the academic performance. Conclusion: This study showed that the counselling services in colleges had been effective in easing out the students' personal difficulties. The constructive support which was received from individual counselling seemed to have a positive influence on the academic performance and the number of sessions correlated positively with the academic performance.