You build the moments where belonging begins. An open house. An admitted student day. Orientation. The first weeks after move-in.

You can describe your own version of each one. What is harder to see is how other admissions and orientation teams build the same moments. This survey is how that picture gets made.

The Belonging Survey takes about 10 minutes. Your answers shape a national benchmark, from open houses and admitted student days through orientation and the first year.

What other campuses rarely share

A campus can say its own visit day ran well. It is much harder to tell whether that day looks like the ones other schools run. The brochure is public. The schedule behind it usually stays in the office.

That is the gap. Student belonging on this site is the feeling of being part of campus. This survey asks the people who design the events that are supposed to start that feeling.

The deposited-student side of the same problem is a different article, on the belonging gap before move-in. This one is the comparison those teams do not have yet.

Why the benchmark follows the whole year

Belonging is not one weekend. A student is choosing, then waiting to arrive, then walking into orientation, then living the first year. A campus can describe its own open house. It rarely knows whether the year after that day looks like anyone else's.

The comparison that matters is who owns belonging at each stage, whether the handoff from admissions to orientation holds, and whether anyone can tell the program made a difference. Measurement and budget belong in that picture too. A program you cannot defend is a program that gets cut. Those questions are on the Belonging Survey.

The campus names for this work are admissions and enrollment, admitted student day, new student orientation, and new student programs. The year after welcome week lives with student engagement.

A good week can still lose the student

Picture the Monday after welcome week. Orientation has the attendance. Admissions has the yield from admitted-student day. The first-year lead has a retention number that will not move until October.

None of those three answers whether a student felt they belonged on Tuesday. Each office can be proud of its own week and still lose the person between them.

The break is usually the handoff. Admissions believes the student was introduced. Orientation meets someone who still does not know which session is theirs.

The first-year office hears who left and never learns which welcome-week room they sat in. The benchmark exists so those weeks can be read as one year.

The word does not mean the same job

On one campus, belonging is a small group at orientation. On another, it is a line in a yield report. On a third, it is the sentence you need when someone asks what the program is for.

If the word means different work, comparing the programs is noise. The benchmark sets the definitions next to the stages, so a visit-day team and a first-year team are not describing two different promises by accident.

It also looks at what a team can show. Some offices trust a signal. Some are still deciding by instinct, because the number never comes back to them. Both belong in the picture. When the budget is flat, the program you cannot explain is the one that gets trimmed.

A single national average would hide that. A small college and a large public university are not the same problem. The benchmark keeps room for the kind of institution and the size of the class, so you can read your year beside a campus that looks like yours.

Who this picture is for

Admissions and orientation teams build these stages. A director sees the case they have to make. A coordinator sees the session that worked and the one that was only a welcome speech.

The benchmark needs both. A strategy without the week, and a week without the strategy, is how the handoff breaks.

Students are living the year. They are not who this survey is asking. The picture is for the people who designed the moments, whether belonging sits in one office or is passed between three. If that is your week, take the Belonging Survey.

What you get for finishing

You already know your own year. What you do not have is everyone else's, shared in aggregate, before it is public. That is the page for the meeting where someone asks why this work should stay.

Two things come with finishing the Belonging Survey. A $15 Amazon gift card, and the full report before it goes to anyone else.

Your campus is not named. Results are shared in aggregate only. The email you enter is used to send the gift card and the report. A follow-up conversation is optional. The report is the shared picture, not a private review of your events.

Take the Belonging Survey

The benchmark comes from the people who build these days. You already run the moments. What is missing is how everyone else runs them. Take the Belonging Survey.

Frequently asked questions