Survey shows freshman commitment to NAU

Nearly eight out of 10 incoming freshmen reported that Northern Arizona University was their first choice for college and that the university's size was one of the determining factors in choosing NAU, a survey reported.

The freshmen also said the most important reason for attending college was to learn more about things that interested them.

The university participated in a Cooperative Institutional Research Program Survey in the summer of 2005. In addition to securing responses from 1,428 first-time, full-time freshmen at NAU, the college's Office of Planning, Budget, and Institutional Research took the survey a step further by obtaining data from other institutions of a similar size and caliber so they could compare it with NAU's respondents.

"The ability to compare our incoming students to the incoming students at similar institutions nationwide is invaluable in providing NAU with the opportunity to see how our students are similar and different from other college-bound students," said Christine Arazan, planning and policy analyst.

Some key results include:

• NAU students were more likely than the national norm group to report that NAU was their first college choice.
• Incoming freshmen were significantly more likely than the national norm group to indicate that an important reason for going to college was that they wanted to get away from home.
• NAU students also are significantly more likely to respond that they "wanted to go to a school about the size of this college" and that they were "offered financial assistance."
• NAU students are committed to graduating from NAU. They are unlikely to plan on transferring, have high expectations for their collegiate experiences, anticipate being more involved in their college experience, and are more likely to indicate that NAU was their first choice for college.
• NAU students appear to be just as socially active in high school as their peers. Additionally, NAU students anticipate being as involved, if not more, in a variety of university activities.
• NAU students appear to be as academically prepared for college when compared to the national norm groups.

For a full copy of the survey, click here.