Efficacy of Intrusively Advising First-Year Students via Frequent Reminders for Advising Appointments

Intrusive advising has been frequently used to encourage or require at-risk or probationary students to attend advising sessions. The efficacy of intrusive advising targeted to all students has received little attention. We implemented a case-control experiment with 501 first-year students at a large, urban, state university to test the efficacy of nonmandated intrusive advising designed to encourage advising session attendance. Students in three academic units were randomly assigned to outreach or no outreach conditions. Those in the outreach group received a series of reminders to schedule advising appointments. Results suggest intrusive advising was successful in increasing the probability students would schedule and keep an advising appointment during their first semester of college enrollment and in shortening the time until that appointment was held. Implications for broad implementation of intrusive advising are discussed.