There is consensus in the literature that effective guidance actions during the last years of secondary education help students to make better decisions regarding their university choice.

The transition from school to university is a critical phase involving identity redefinition and complex learning adjustments, underscoring the need for guidance that promotes autonomy and future planning. Effective guidance involves coordinated actions—informative, experiential, reflective—that help students make informed choices and align their paths with personal and societal goals. Research shows that consistent academic advising enhances decision-making, engagement, and academic success, while future-oriented interventions support career adaptability and long-term academic commitment.

Providing students with more effective guidance and information on the organisation of the university and the subject they are going to study should make them more aware and therefore diminish their risk of dropping out during their studies. Their performance in terms of credits obtained could also increase.

To test this hypothesis, we use data from the administrative archives of the University of Padova (UNIPD), a large atheneum in the northeast of Italy. UNIPD has a long tradition of guidance actions on the territory, but their effectiveness in terms of academic achievement has not been thoroughly investigated. The administrative archive of UNIPD provides information on the academic careers, during their first year, of the freshman enrolled in academic year 2023-2024 (dropout, change of course and number of credits obtained) as well as information on their educational background. Other information on the socio-economic characteristics of the newly enrolled, and information on the guidance actions pursued by students, is obtained via the “Freshman questionnaire”, which is proposed to all freshmen at the time of enrolment. Using a logistic regression model, we estimate the effect of having attended specific guidance actions on the probability of dropping out during the first year of enrolment. In addition, the relation between number of credits achieved at the end of the first year and the guidance actions is investigated using a simple linear model. Our results indicate that, controlling for personal and background characteristics, the probability of dropping out within the first year decreases if the students attended guidance meetings during high school and if they participated in the public presentation of UNIPD and/or of the degree course in which they enrolled. As regards the performance during the first year, the fact of having attended an open day of the degree course in which the student enrolled, increased the number of credits achieved at the end of the first year. This evidence suggests that a strong guidance campaign could decrease future dropout and ameliorate students’ performance.

Keywords: Higher education, students’ guidance, dropout.