Summary.Recent research shows a high prevalence of psycho‐social disturbance in university students, and there is some evidence that inadequate social participation is associated with disturbance and with failure to complete courses. This study examines the extent, degree and type of difficulty in social situations reported by a random sample of Oxford University students. Nearly 10 per cent, mostly from lower social classes and small families, had great difficulty in, or tried to avoid, about six common social situations described in a questionnaire, and a principal components analysis discriminated different types of social difficult