Introduction: College transition is often regarded as the most stressful phase of life by college students. Hence, it is necessary to find ways to help them adjust more smoothly to this transition. Hope, as conceptualized by C. R. Snyder, has been widely studied as a predictor of optimal functioning and has been shown to be associated with better adjustment among college students. This study aimed to shed light on the role of hope in college transition by examining its unique reciprocal relationships with an array of important psychosocial resources and emotional well‐being among first‐year college students. Methods: Data were collected from a sample of Hong Kong college freshmen ( N  = 433, Median age  = 18 years old, 63.7% female) at two time points. At each time point, participants completed self‐reported measures tapping into their levels of hope, psychosocial resources, and emotional well‐being. Psychological resources included general and academic self‐efficacy, meaning in life, and optimism. Social resources included secure attachment, perceived school environment, and social support. Emotional well‐being was operationalized as positive and negative emotions. Cross‐lagged panel models were constructed and tested by path analyses. Results: When autoregression and the effects of other variables were controlled, a greater sense of hope uniquely predicted higher levels of general and academic self‐efficacy, greater presence of life meanings, more secure attachment, and more positive and fewer negative emotions. On the other hand, higher levels of meaning in life (both presence and search) and social support uniquely predicted greater hope. Academic hope and presence of life meanings reciprocally predicted one another, whereas other significant cross‐lagged relationships were unidirectional. Conclusions: The findings suggest interventions that promote hope can be useful in helping college freshmen adjust to the new college environment by enhancing their psychosocial

Colleges around the world have adopted emergency online learning to continue with teaching and learning activities during COVID-19. Existing research has indicated that this teaching mode is perceived negatively by many college students. The difficulty students encounter in emergency online learning can adversely affect their mental health and academic performance. To shed further light on how emergency online learning may have impeded college students' academic functioning and adjustment, this study examined the association between online learning stress and academic coping and the mediating roles of academic self-efficacy and academic hope. It was conducted in early 2021, a year after the outbreak of the pandemic. Ninety-nine Chinese college students in Hong Kong were recruited and they completed an online questionnaire for this study. Results showed that online learning stress was negatively associated with approach academic coping and social support seeking, and the associations were mediated by academic hope. On the other hand, online learning stress was positively associated with avoidance academic coping, which was not mediated by academic hope. The mediation effects of academic self-efficacy were all non-significant. In sum, college students used more passive and maladaptive coping to handle academic problems when they experienced more online learning stress, and this was partly explained by lower levels of academic hope. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis.