Exploring Sense of Belonging for CS Majors with Direct vs Competitive Admission Pathways

Sense of belonging has been shown to be important for student persistence and success in computer science. A student's sense of belonging is related to a variety of factors, including gender, prior programming experience, first generation status, and elements of the learning environment. Prior work has also shown that competitive admission processes have a negative impact on student sense of belonging. This paper explores sense of belonging of students who enter a computer science major through either a direct or competitive admission pathway. We look at how admission pathway, prior programming experience, and self-identification as a minority in computer science affect sense of belonging for these students. We find that sense of belonging does not differ in a significant way between admission pathways, however prior experience and self-identification as a minority do affect sense of belonging.