Alyssa Ortega is a fourth-year Psychology/Communications double major researching the transfer student experience. Although college transfer students perform similarly to traditional students, research highlights experiential differences between the two groups. Specifically, low social connectedness, financial hardship, commutes to and from school, and little free time color the transfer experience. This phenomenon known as transfer shock. While there is much research that touches on the academic outcomes of the transfer population, less research investigates this population’s mental health. Alyssa’s research describes the relationship between being a transfer student and mental health outcomes. She is interested in uncovering the risk factors that exist in the transfer population that increase its risk for poor mental health outcomes. Additionally, she is determining the structural resilience factors that buffer against this poor mental health by distributing an online survey to both traditional and transfer students that asks questions targeting their experiences and feelings. She hopes to find a bigger correlation between student experience and poor mental health outcomes in the transfer population compared to the traditional population.