The first year of university studies is characterized by a new organizational, social and educational context that the student faces. This one is regulated by explicit and implicit standards that he/she must know in order to be a part of the student community. The approach to this phenomenon responds to the urgent question about what happens with the student when passing through the secondary education-superior education stage, what are the demands that arise from this process and how could they be supplied in an integral and contextualized way. In this sense, this paper aims to advance in the orientation analyses of needs that the student who is going through his/her first year of studies at Universidad Autónoma de Occidente (Cali-Colombia) has, in order to characterized the profile of these needs and to define which ones represent a major tendency. This research opts for a complementary perspective of the quantitative and qualitative approaches. The findings show that the transition between secondary and university results more intricate than other academic transitions, due to the fact that it becomes a complex and critic process that includes multiple vital transformations. Moreover, the teaching-learning practices, during the first year of studies, are one of the points that must be enhanced by the academic institution.