Welcome, Freshmen!

Finis origine pendet," the Roman poet Manlius wrote. "The end depends on the beginning." Success in life hinges on how well we are reared--and what we learn in school. More than ever these days, getting off to a good start in college can make the difference between getting a degree and giving up. That makes the passage from teenager at home to first-year college student one of the most stressful and important transitions in life.

Many popular guides to American colleges rate them on such factors as the number of volumes in the library, the percentage of faculty with Ph.D.s and the SAT scores of incoming freshmen. There is, however, an essential component that most guidebooks ignore, or have not figured out how to measure: Are the students engaged by their courses? How well do they learn?

In recent years, in our own separately published guidebook, The Best College for You, TIME has named a group of Colleges of the Year, selected not as anointed "winners" of a ranking exercise but rather as exemplars--schools that have taken laudable steps to improve their undergraduate education. Each year our criterion has a different focus--from promoting minority access to providing academic opportunities for residents of the surrounding community. Last year we used the teaching of writing across the curriculum as our measure of success, and we named four Colleges of the Year that reflected the variety of postsecondary institutions in America: a large university with research facilities, a state university with courses up to the master's level, a liberal arts college and a community college.

This year TIME recognizes four institutions with highly effective programs to help first-year students make a successful transition into college life. Helping new students survive has, in our judgment, become an essential responsibility of every college. That task takes on new urgency this year, as the children of baby boomers swell the freshman classes of many universities to record numbers in a dorm-bursting wave that won't peak until the end of the decade.

The profile of American college students has changed dramatically over the past 20 years as the proportion of high school graduates going to college has increased from 49% to 63%. There are more minority students, more first-generation students--and more students who lack basic skills. Far more students must take jobs to cover college costs. Add to all that the sudden freedom of college life, and the stage is set for emotional turmoil, binge drinking and academic failure.

At highly selective institutions, the vast majority of students graduate. But at public universities, which educate most U.S. students getting bachelor's degrees, nearly 60% fail to complete degrees within five years--and half of those leave during the first year. The dropout rate is even higher at many community colleges, where students are juggling jobs with their course work.

"We operate under the assumption that students know how to do it--or if they don't, they'll flunk out and it's their problem," says John Gardner, executive director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College and the leader--along with Russell Edgerton of the Pew Forum on Undergraduate Learning--of a panel of higher-education experts that advised us during our selection process.*