There has been a steady increase in college enrollment rates in recent decades, which has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in graduation rates. If this discrepancy is partly due to insufficient effort exerted by students, policies that aim at rewarding effort explicitly may succeed in increasing graduation rates. A unique and rich…

Compared with admissions test scores, why are high school grades better at predicting college graduation? We argue that success in college requires not only cognitive ability but also self-regulatory competencies that are better indexed by high school grades. In a national sample of 47,303 students who applied to college for the 2009/2010 academic…

Self-referent performance beliefs can influence people's decision making related to long-term goals. Current measures of such beliefs, however, do not explicitly focus on the long-term aspects of goal achievement. We introduce a new concept, Long-Term Prospects (LTP), which is defined as the self-perception that one can maintain the continuous…

We utilized data from a multi-institutional longitudinal study to investigate the association between diversity-related coursework and moral development among students over 4 years of college. Our findings parallel the prior research, which support the positive effects of diversity on college students, by offering new evidence that diversity…

This predictive correlational research study examined the effect of cognitive, demographic, and socioeconomic variables as predictors of regular and special admission students' first-year GPA and retention among a sample of 7,045 students. Findings indicated high school GPA and ACT scores were the two most effective predictors of regular and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate if there are differences in how cognitive and noncognitive variables predict academic performance for college students with learning disabilities. In particular, this study examined the extent to which the cognitive variables of high school grade point average and SAT (combined verbal and math) or ACT…

We need to come together as a team and become one system of total quality improvement regarding the education of our nation's children. In order to achieve a gold standard in the education of our nation's children, leadership has to be willing to go against the status quo and build bridges for long-term sustainable change. In order to survive,…

Three mental rotation tasks, the Card Rotation Task (CRT), the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test (VMRT), and the Money Road-Map of Direction Sense (MRM), were administered to 60 deaf students from Gallaudet University to determine if mental rotation was predictive of scores on the ACT English or Math subtests. Other predictor variables, such as…

Noncognitive attributes as the researchers have measured them do correlate with college GPA, but the incremental validity associated with these measures is relatively small. The noncognitive measures are correlated with other valued dimensions of student performance beyond the achievement reflected in college grades. There were much smaller…

This study is an investigation of the derivation of scores that predict whether or not prospective first-time freshmen will apply or will enroll and whether or not first-time freshman enrollees will graduate using data from the ACT (American College Testing) assessment. Using a regression methodology, four basic scores are derived to be…

Using cognitive and psychosocial variables, predicted the academic performance of 40 female and 84 male specially admitted White freshmen. High school rank and American College Test scores were the most effective overall predictors. Demonstrated community service and preference for long-term goals were significant psychosocial predictors for…

The relative strengths and predictive relationships among three cognitive measures (ACT subscores, preprofessional grade point average, and Allied Health Professions Admission Test subscores) and first-year academic success in allied health curricula were examined. Methodology is described and findings presented. Preprofessional grades generally…

Data from a standardized reading test and student background information were correlated to determine relationships. Self-assessed reading scores and other data may be used for predicting retention, academic performance, and reading ability. Differences were found between persisters and dropouts on these variables. (Author)

One approach to test bias has focused on identifying the potential variables or factors that may be responsible for bias in a particular test for a particular subgroup. This approach was employed in this study to determine variables which may relate to differential test performance by Anglo and Hispanic students. The test materials used in this…