Research on students' transition, retention and experiences in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has increasingly focused on identity formation and on students' integration in the study programmes. However, studies focusing on the role of the curriculum in this process at the level of higher education are scarce. The present article analyses how the students' transition into STEM higher education and their construction of a disciplinary identity is affected by the design of the curriculum. Twenty students entering a STEM higher education programme were followed through consecutive narrative interviews from the end of upper-secondary school and 1-3 times during first year at higher education. The data was analysed using a framework based on Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing. Most students experienced strongly classified and strongly framed higher education programmes where the modules were isolated from each other, and the sequencing and pace made it difficult to experience the courses as meaningful. This impeded the students' construction of a disciplinary identity. There are indications that weaker classification and framing offer the students a transition into first year where the students experienced the programmes as more meaningful.