New research from Michigan State University finds that in the four years after the COVID-19 pandemic upended campus life, the majority of college students successfully bounced back. Students experienced rising life satisfaction and declining loneliness and, surprisingly, even a fonder remembrance of online classes from the early days of the pandemic.

The study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, is one of the few longitudinal studies to come out of the pandemic. Researchers tracked the same 248 college students from 2020–21 through 2025.

The study — which sampled MSU students — found broad improvements in psychological functioning. Participants reported higher life satisfaction, less loneliness and seeing friends more often in person again.