The success of an orientation leader depends upon three things: an understanding of the college, an understanding of the entering student, and an ability to communicate and empathize. The purpose of this report is to examine the psychological world of the new student through the words he uses, the meaning they hold for him, and the impact they have on his behavior. A semantic differential was administered to a random sample of 103 members of the entering freshman class of the State University College at Oswego during the 1970 summer orientation program. Each participant rated 12 of the concepts on 6 scales, 2 evaluative, 2 potency, and 2 activity. These scales were so arranged that a subject could choose any one of 7 steps between the extremes. The results for each concept were averaged to yield 3 scores that would serve to locate the point in a semantic space for the total entering freshman class, and for males and females separately. The concepts were grouped in 4 clusters: (1) persons; (2) college; (3) social change; and (4) the future. (AF)