EAST LANSING, Mich. — Just as books can’t be judged by their covers, neither can incoming college students be assessed solely by college entrance exams and high school GPAs.

A new study by MSU psychologists suggests that a combination of biographical data, judgment measures and ability can be used effectively to clump students into a small handful of categories. Such sorting, in turn, may improve efforts to shape important parts of the college experience and intervene with students prone to run into problems, according to the researchers.

This new measuring stick might help smooth the playing field and reshape the idea of post-secondary achievement, according to Michigan State University psychology professors Neal Schmitt, Fred Oswald and a team of graduate students, who co-wrote the study.

Educators and counselors long have looked for a reliable means to anticipate student success in college. Test scores and GPAs are seen as one-dimensional – useful to foretell classroom success but of limited value in predicting outcomes such as the likelihood of developing leadership skills, close interpersonal relationships and a sound sense of ethics.

And the disproportionate focus on academic performance tends to hurt certain minority groups, such as blacks and Hispanics. Such groups tend to earn lower scores than their white counterparts and accordingly, often suffer when it comes to college admissions and subsequent employment opportunities.

For starters, since college is about more than cracking the dean’s list, Schmitt and his co-writers first broadened the definition of student success to include resolving to stay in school, attending class regularly, acting as good campus citizens and achieving an overall sense of satisfaction about the college experience.

Next, the researchers surveyed more than 2,700 freshmen at 10 colleges and universities across the United States. In addition to providing test scores and high school GPAs, the students provided a large amount of biographical data and answered questions measuring their situational judgment. In examining the responses, the researchers found the students clumped naturally into five distinct categories.

One group labeled “low academic, career-oriented students” was characterized by dismal test scores and GPAs, but displayed top marks when it came to career orientation. Hispanic and black students were four to five times more likely to be members of this cluster than were Asian or white students. Also, women were twice as likely as men to be in the group.

Another group, labeled “high ability, culturally limited,” earned relatively high test scores and grades, but came up short in appreciation of or interest in such cultural accoutrements as the arts and diversity.

The third cluster of students was marginal on most dimensions and their knowledge and perseverance were found to be particularly low. Students in a fourth group, termed the “able artistic group,” were characterized by the highest SAT and ACT scores, with low scores on career orientation, adaptability and perseverance.

The fifth group, the “academically able, well-rounded group,” had the highest scores on all dimensions: knowledge, continuous learning, diversity, leadership, social responsibility, adaptability, perseverance and ethics.

Armed with scores on the biographical and judgment measures along with traditional indices such as ACT or SAT scores and high school grades, teachers and parents might take different approaches “to aid these students to adapt to college life and optimize their college experience,” write the authors in an article that will appear next year in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

For example, students who struggle academically but remain energized by the working world might benefit from specific help on study skills and efforts to tie classroom work to career goals. And those in the high scoring but culturally deficient lot could be encouraged to seek a wider range or university experiences.

The authors add that knowing what underpins student success someday could influence a range of educational endeavors, including “the development of curricular and extracurricular programs, career counseling and training materials, and college admissions criteria.”

For more information or to receive a prepublication version of the paper, contact Schmitt at schmitt@msu.edu.

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