The Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) collects data from first-year, transfer, and older students, and is administered prior to the start of the fall or winter semester. The BCSSE survey focuses on students’ academic expectations and perceptions for the upcoming college year. The results from BCSSE can pair with NSSE results to provide further in-depth information on students’ engagement.

The survey includes more than thirty questions asking about students’ demographic information, high school experiences, and expected first-year experiences. In addition, the BCSSE Scales are generated to provide specific aspects of student engagement and beliefs about the coming college year which including Learning Strategies, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Expected Academic Perseverance, etc.

BCSSE provides advising reports which summarize individual student’s information and can be shared with advisors to help them better understand their advisee. BCSSE also provides institutional reports which include three sections focusing on the background characteristics of students, frequency distributions for all questions on the survey, and overall institutional means for BCSSE Scales.

The results of BCSSE are linked below: