Students from low-income families consistently trail behind their peers in retention and degree attainment. Research on college student experiences suggests that low-income students experience "cultural mismatch" at college--they feel that their backgrounds are at odds with the middle-class values dominant on campus (Armstrong &…

The experience of second-year students has been the focus of many studies that have identified the broad concerns of the second-year experience, but limited attention has been given to how the experience differs for African American students. This study attempts to fill that gap. The research described here was part of a larger study examining the…