First-Year Seminars and Experiences
Many schools now build into the curriculum first-year seminars or other programs that bring small groups of students together with faculty or staff on a regular basis. The highest-quality first-year experiences place a strong emphasis on critical inquiry, frequent writing, information literacy, collaborative learning, and other skills that develop students’ intellectual and practical competencies. First-year seminars can also involve students with cutting-edge questions in scholarship and with faculty members’ own research. More here.

According to the National Resource Center, 90% of institutions offered a first-year seminar in 2012.

Colleges of Distinction identifies several variations:

Some of the common types of opportunities available to first-year students include:

  • First Year Seminars: Often taught by prominent members of the faculty and focusing on their personal academic interests, these seminars offer students small class sizes and frequently involve an introduction to college-level writing and research.
  • First‐Year Interest Groups (FIGs): FIGs create small cohorts of students who meet together in a weekly seminar led by faculty or staff, and may take one or more classes together and/or participate in a residential learning community.
  • Residential Learning Communities: Residential learning communities bring students together to share a wing or floor of a residence hall and an academic seminar or shared courses.
  • Undergraduate Research Scholars: These programs allow new college students to engage in research, often as a collaborative exercise under the guidance of faculty.
  • Learning Communities: Similar to FIGs, learning communities bring students together for a series of thematically-organized, interdisciplinary courses with collaborative or research focus.
  • Service Learning: Service learning experiences are course-related opportunities that allow first-year students to participate in ongoing volunteer projects throughout their first college semester.
  • Community‐Based Projects: Universities host campus-wide initiatives for first-year students to engage in volunteerism en masse, such as park or waterway cleanup, Habitat for Humanity projects, or similar activities.

US News has recognised 101 colleges with extraordinary first year seminar programs.

Some examples: