Successful transition to college requires understanding the college system as much as the academic subjects taught therein. This article describes the creation of the Transitions Lab, a T.I.D.E.S. model (Boylan, 2009) of student support including collaboration with institutional and community partners, advising, tutoring, and retesting assistance for students whose initial placement scores did not qualify them for credit-level courses. The article reports an empirical test of the T.I.D.E.S. model through measures of the lab's success in providing comprehensive support for incoming students, introducing the transitions mission fueling the work, and implications for colleges interested in establishing their own lab or scaling up existing student support initiatives.