Continuing and Transfer Students Exploring Retention and Second-Year Success

This research examines factors that contribute to persistence of sophomore students. It builds a model to predict the likelihood of leaving the institution by third year and explores whether the concept of transfer receptivity can be used to explain differences in persistence between continuing and transfer sophomore students. Results indicate that financial variables and transfer status are the most important variables in sophomores' retention. Other student precollege characteristics and experiences during college also display statistical significance in the model we built. Implications for theory and practice are presented, including a discussion of a persistence framework and transfer receptivity concept.