Education Commons^™

College Readiness, Student Expectations And Sucess: The Role Of Non-Cognitive Skills, Malachi Nichols, Julie R. Trivitt, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Attending college is a significant human capital investment but only about 56% of those who start college will have a completed degree 6 years later. This makes identifying which skills are associated with college success an important policy concern. We surveyed over 1,100 entering college freshmen, majoring in business and engineering at a public university in the US, and combined this information with administrative data to create a comprehensive data set that, in addition to the usual academic performance data, cognitive ability measures, and demographics, also included measures of non-cognitive skills, personality traits, and student expectations about college success. With …