title: Factors Related to First Year College Success in a Selected Group of Scholarship Recipients
Creators: name: Giles, LaVerl C.
Publisher: name: Utah State University
Year: 1965

description: The idea of a scholarship program is almost as old as the oldest institution of higher learning. The universality of such a program is almost completely comprehensive throughout the world. Although the purpose of scholarship programs has varied as much as each of the institutions varies, in most of the situations the programs have been well acclaimed. The success of these programs in terms of the student has often been tested or at least scrutinized. This type of study has been attempted several times. However, both Harris and Endler, in reviewing the literature from 1931 to 1959, report that there is little agreement as to the relative merit of any particular kind of test, scores, grades, or other subjective evaluations used to select successful scholastic achievers. Henceforth, throughout this paper, these selective factors and others to be cited will be referred to as factors or variables predictive of academic success or predictive factors.
A more complex type of problem associated with the granting of scholarships has been that of predicting the successful scholarship recipient. That is, the scholarship recipient who will be successful in college. An extensive review of the literature to date reveals only a few scientific studies on the predictors of successful scholarship holders. Most of the studies were conducted in an attempt to predict college success, using the grades for the first year of college as the criterion of success. Therefore, with confusion in the area of predicting college success as indicated by the author cited above, the need for such a study is evident.
The purpose of this investigation will be to identify some of the variables which appear to be predictive of or correlates of the successful scholarship recipient. In this study it will be necessary to define what the writer means by successful scholarship recipient. Hereafter the term successful scholarship recipient will refer to those students who have been able to maintain, during their freshman year of college, a grade point average of 3.0 or B average. Universities and colleges generally require that a student maintain at least a grade point ranging from C to B to retain his scholarship. He must also live in accordance with the rules and regulations of the institutions. Very few scholarship recipients, for example, lose their financial aids for reasons of incorrigibility. The criterion for success, therefore will be that of maintaining the grade point average required.
In this investigation the writer will attempt to answer the following questions: (a) What type of test scores, grades, evaluations or non-intellectual or biographical factors can be used to identify scholarship recipients who will be successful in college; (b) will the use of several factors together be more predictive of the academic success of scholarship recipients; (c) are nonintellectual or biographical factors useful in selecting scholarship recipients; (d) can the factors predictive of academic success now in use be validated.