The voice of university freshmen on their first university exams

The transition from high school to university represents a delicate and crucial phase for an individual's future and personal, social, and professional fulfilment, often involving significant challenges and the risk of dropout. This transition process involves not only adapting to a new environment, new people, and new rules but also engaging with a different learning method. During this phase, university freshmen can easily get lost and end up among the “dropouts.” In order to explore the main difficulties faced by students when transitioning from high school to university, this study investigates the perceptions of freshmen enrolled in the Bachelor's Degree program in Education Sciences (L19) at the University Sapienza of Rome regarding the grades they obtained in exams taken during their first semester. The objective of this work was to explore and analyze some aspects of the first university exams, considering the different perceptions of students regarding the difficulty encountered in studying, the complexity of the exam structure, expectations about the final grade, and the evaluation criteria used by the professors. A qualitative approach was adopted for the project, involving semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in the Education Sciences program. Finally, the data analysis was carried out using MAXQDA software, which allowed the identification of both macro and micro categories. The results of this research not only give voice to the experiences of freshmen but also provide useful insights for designing targeted interventions to facilitate students' adaptation to the university environment and reduce the risk of dropout.