Transfer students get early start at building community

Photo by Peggy Harrison

By Virginia E. Carter

Transfer students are different. That recognition led to the first session for transfers offered in mid-July as part of the orientation program for new students.

“Even though transfers are new to the University, they aren’t new to the collegiate experience,” said Tabitha Enoch, director of orientation and new student programs.

“In the past, they often told us that they felt everything was geared to the new, first-year student. In planning a session just for transfers, we could take a little bit more of an adult perspective and spend more time on the things that transfers share in common. Also, because they are together they can begin to form social connections,” Enoch said.

Each year, an average of 500 to 600 students enter U.Va. as transfer students. Meredith Argeris, Mariam Haladjian and Alicia Pettit all came to U.Va. as transfer students and agree that transfers can benefit from tailored programs. This summer the three worked as orientation leaders, helping smooth the way for challenges that new students, especially transfers, face.

Housing is one such challenge, since transfers often find out late about their acceptance and they aren’t required to live on Grounds, as is the case for first-years. Where to live was an issue for Haladjian, who is also an international student. A native of Cyprus, she transferred to U.Va. from Georgetown University as a second-year.

“As a transfer, you still want to form a community on Grounds,” said Haladjian, who to her great satisfaction ended up living in the International Residential College.
Coursework is another challenge. Transfers seek more upper-level courses and are thinking more definitively about a major. Students entering as third-year students have the added pressure of declaring a major when they come to orientation.

As with housing, social issues loom larger for transfers since they join the community after many of their classmates, as first-years, have already made friends and joined social organizations. Argeris, now a fourth-year who is from Ocean, N.J., and transferred from the University of Richmond, was concerned about how others would accept her. The answer, she said, is to get involved — whether joining the class council or University Programs Council, as she did, or any of the hundreds of other organizations on Grounds.

Pettit, a third-year student from Severna Park, Md., who transferred from the University of Texas at Austin, said getting involved is easier when you know other transfer students.

“You’re more likely to go out and do things together, like going to a football game,” she said.

In addition to helping with orientation, Pettit will serve this year as a mentor with the Transfer Student Peer Advisor Program, which pairs an upperclassman with a group of approximately 20 transfer students.