More than a third of students enter higher education at a community college; most aim to earn a baccalaureate. Drawing on sense-making theory and longitudinal qualitative data, we examined how community college students interpret state transfer policies and how their interpretations influence subsequent behavior. Data from 3 years of interviews revealed how students adjudicate between multiple intersecting policies. The higher education context, where institutions provided competing signals about policies, left students to navigate complex messages to achieve their transfer goals. Students’ approaches to understanding transfer policies primarily followed one of two patterns: adopting policy signals as step-by-step procedures or adapting and combining policy signals to create a customized transfer pathway. Both approaches had important implications for students’ transfer outcomes.

超过三分之一的学生在社区大学接受高等教育；大多数目标是获得学士学位。借助感性理论和纵向定性数据，我们研究了社区大学生如何解释状态转移政策以及他们的解释如何影响随后的行为。来自3年访谈的数据揭示了学生如何在多个相交策略之间做出判断。高等教育环境中，各机构提供了有关政策的相互竞争的信号，使学生能够浏览复杂的信息以实现其转移目标。学生理解转移政策的方法主要遵循以下两种模式之一：采用政策信号作为逐步过程，或调整和组合政策信号以创建定制的转移途径。