Students who perform well at school academically are more likely to complete Year 12 and experience smoother transitions from education to employment. However, disentangling the effects of prior academic achievement on later performance from other confounding factors, such as socioeconomic status, has proved difficult. This study uses data from…

The satellite university campus is becoming more prominent in Australia, and may consist of a large proportion of students of low socio-economic status (SES). Concurrently, there is a governmental target to increase the proportion of low SES students at university. However, there are concerns that students of low SES may be less successful at…

The purpose of the present study was to explore whether professional skepticism can be learned in a classroom setting, an issue that has received scant attention in the prior literature. A questionnaire was administered to students enrolled either in the accounting program or in the business administration program of a large college in China. The…

The big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) model predicts students' academic self-concept to be negatively predicted by the achievement level of their reference group, controlling for individual achievement. Despite an abundance of empirical evidence supporting the BFLPE, there have been relatively few studies searching for possible moderators.…

Students commencing tertiary education enter through a number of traditional and alternative academic pathways. As a result, tertiary institutions encounter a broad range of students, varying in demographic, previous education, characteristics and academic achievement. In recent years, the relatively constant increase in tertiary applications in…

The population of 674 first-year student-athletes culled from 5 successive freshman classes (2004-2008) at a mid-size midwestern university was examined to determine what combination of demographic, academic, and athletic variables best predicted retention into the 2nd academic year. The dependent variable of retention was chosen because it is a…

We present one of the first behavior-genetic studies of individual differences in school students' levels of achievement in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA). We assessed these language abilities in Australian twin pairs (maximum N pairs = 251) by means of teacher ratings, class rankings, and self-ratings of proficiency, and used the…

As high schools offer more pre-Advanced Placement (pre-AP) and Advanced Placement (AP) courses to prepare students for college academics, students often are given quality grade point average (GPA) points to help compensate for the rigorous curriculum. In states where class ranking determines automatic university admission, fluctuations of class…

This study sought to determine whether the use of standardized test scores contributes any useful information regarding First Time in College (FTIC) students' probable success at USF, using more detailed analysis of underrepresented minorities and women, who Micceri (2009) shows, experience substantial negative bias relative to males and whites on…

In studies of the SAT, correlations of SAT scores, high school grades, and socioeconomic factors (SES) are usually obtained using a university as the unit of analysis. This approach obscures an important structural aspect of the data: The high school grades received by a given institution come from a large number of high schools, all of which have…

The Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) program at the University of Minnesota has drawn from the best practices of Supplemental Instruction, Peer-Led Team Learning, Structured Learning Assistance, the Emerging Scholars Program, and other successful postsecondary peer cooperative learning models to establish guiding principles for structuring learning…

This study compared the effectiveness of several existing and proposed methods for statistically adjusting college grade point averages (GPAs) for course and departmental differences in grading standards, using first-semester grades from an entire entering class at a large state university (4,351 students), in 1988. Most of the adjusted GPAs…

Each of the three studies in this report examines a different aspect of the basic question of what the four item types (analogies, antonyms, reading comprehension, and sentence completion) on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) verbal section are measuring and of whether a change in the relative emphasis on the various item types would enhance the…

The relationship between academic success at DePauw University and such commonly used predictors as tested ability and academic success in high school was examined. The various subtleties of the multiple regression research method were also examined. Subjects were 1758 students who entered DePauw University during the fall semester of 1973, 1974,…

To study whether different forms of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) used since the mid-1970s varied in their correlations with academic performance criteria, 1975 and 1985 forms were administered to 1,554 and 1,753 high school juniors, respectively. The 1975 form did not have greater validity than the 1985 form. (SLD)