For pre-service teachers the first year in higher education is often a challenging time as students struggle with new academic, institutional, personal, professional and financial demands. First Year Experience initiatives aim to support students with these demands yet they are usually presented and delivered as separate from academic study. Arguably, first year curriculum design can facilitate the students' first year transition or hinder it. In this paper we advocate for an approach to first year curriculum design that supports first year students' transition by focusing on soft outcomes, such as building their personal resilience and self-efficacy, in addition to hard outcomes such as their academic competencies and results. Our argument draws upon current higher education curriculum design principles to propose that first year curricula in professional degrees, such as teacher education, could focus on both soft outcomes and hard outcomes in order to foster students' holistic well-being and support transition.