The Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) was launched in 2007 as a companion survey to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). In its first two years, close to 140,000 entering first-year students at 197 institutions across the United States and Canada have participated in BCSSE. Now in its third year, BCSSE continues to collect data about entering college students' high school academic and co-curricular experiences, as well as their expectations for participating in educationally purposeful activities during the first college year. In fall 2008, 119 U.S. and Canadian institutions participated in BCSSE. Of those, 91 (76%) also administered NSSE in 2009, allowing comparisons of incoming student experiences and expectations with their actual experiences at the end of the first year. Even with controls in place, respondents who participated in a learning community reported significantly higher levels of engagement as measured by the NSSE benchmarks for Level of Academic Challenge (p less than 0.001), Active and Collaborative Learning (p less than 0.001), and Student-Faculty Interaction (p less than 0.001). These students also reported significantly higher Supportive Campus Environment scores compared to their peers who did not participate in a learning community (p less than 0.001). Based on data from first-year students enrolled at institutions across the United States, these results provide support for the positive impact of learning communities. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure, and 2 footnotes.)