Research on the Advanced Placement (AP) program generally shows that students scoring 4s and 5s on AP exams outperform their non-AP peers in subsequent college courses. However, faculty and academic advisors often suggest that students with AP credit should repeat prerequisite courses in college before attempting advanced coursework. We compared…

Extant research suggests that student loyalty, a strong bond between the student and university, positively affects important student outcomes, most notably retention. In this article, we advance the notion that academic advisors should become managers of the student-university relationship. We examine the correlation between respondents'…

Bringing their personalities and experiences to their relationships with students, academic advisors engage with a diverse population of students every semester. However, they meet with many students who display cynicism and exhaustion, known as burnout, toward their major. Over 300 music majors across the country were surveyed on their perceived…

Popular and news media sources may play a key role in influencing undergraduate choice of major, yet their unique impact has not been investigated. Most research has focused on the influence of unmediated salient referents, such as parents, on students' major choices. Therefore, we developed a scale to examine the role of media professionals and…

Student satisfaction with advising is positively linked to first-year student retention and sophomore persistence to their senior year. However, inconsistencies in the advising literature confound conclusions about the most effective advising approach to elicit student satisfaction. Positive links between the servant leadership approach and…

In this paper, we analyzed the relationship between students' motivations for choosing academic majors and their satisfaction and sense of belonging on campus. Based on a multi-institutional survey of students who attended large, public, research universities in 2009, the results suggest that external extrinsic motivations for selecting a major…

We introduce 5 cognitive and 3 affective outcome measures related to student judgments and attitudes that might result from quality advising encounters. The outcomes have been linked to, or can be conceptualized as predictive of, retention. We examined these outcomes in an online survey of 22,305 students from 2 community colleges and 7…

In an effort to standardize academic risk assessment, the NCAA developed the graduation risk overview (GRO) model. Although this model was designed to assess graduation risk, its ability to predict grade-point average (GPA) remained unknown. Therefore, 134 individual risk assessments were made to determine GRO model effectiveness in the…

The "Survey of Academic Orientations" ("SAO") measures six orientations in college students believed to represent desirable or undesirable perspectives. Previous research established the connections of "SAO" orientations with grades and persistence. This study shows the extended utility of the "SAO" as an early warning indicator, enabling advisors…