It is widely agreed that the transition from school to university is a daunting experience for many students. The challenges faced by First Year students include; difficulties of coping with different reading requirements, new library resources, the task of taking responsibility for planning and carrying out their own learning in an effective manner and thinking for themselves. It is apparent from anecdotal evidence that academic hurdles such as these seem to contribute to First Year students' unhappiness in, and possible attrition from University life. As a means of addressing this problem, the Higher Education Authority sponsored the establishment of a "Learning Support Unit" (LSU) research project in UCD for three years (2002-2005). It was the remit of this research unit to assess the effectiveness of a specially designed "generic learning skills" intervention programme for use with First Year students. This "generic learning skills" programme comprised advice and instruction on approaches to learning and studying, information literacy skills and critical thinking skills. The LSU were interested in discovering whether the provision of such a programme could improve (i) First Year students' cognitive and academic performance (ii) student retention and (iii) students' satisfaction with their experience of University life. Following ethical approval for the research design of this study, students from the Departments of Psychology, Chemistry and Experimental Physics were invited to take part in the research project. A pilot study was run in order to select the psychometric tests for use in the main research study (n = 457). As a result of this pilot study, the following psychometric tests were chosen; the "Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students" (ASSIST; Tait, Entwistle and McCune, 1998) the "California Critical Thinking Skills Test" (Facione, 2000) and the "Information Skills Test" (LSU, 2003). The main study began in September 2003 with over 660 First Year students volunteering to take part in the pre-intervention phase of psychometric testing. Over the course of the academic year, all First Year students in the Departments of Psychology, Chemistry and Experimental Physics were exposed to the learning skills intervention. Students in Psychology and Experimental Physics received the intervention through their tutorials, while Chemistry laboratory practicals were selected as the medium through which Chemistry students would receive the learning skills training. The instruction of the programme in each academic department was carried out by postgraduate students (Psychology n = 15, Chemistry n = 14, Experimental Physics n = 4). Post-intervention psychometric testing was conducted in March 2004. This phase of testing saw over 150 students volunteer to take part. Following a series of methodological checks on both the representativeness of the samples and the reliability of the tests, a series of quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. The results of these analyses are highlighted in the presentation along with relevant implications and cautions. Finally, suggestions for further research in this field are also made.