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Predictors of academic status of freshmen at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between academic status at the conclusion of the freshman year and final class rank at the time of high school graduation, scores attained on the ACT and/or SAT, high school quartile rank at the time of graduation, number of credit hours attempted during the freshman year, cumulative grade point average at the end of the freshman year and gender of student. Also, the study attempted to determine which of these variables, taken alone or in combination, predicted the academic status of freshmen. The population for this study consisted of all first-time freshmen who graduated from an accredited Nebraska high school and who enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln during the fall semester of 1985-86. The population was limited to students who were Nebraska residents at the time of college enrollment. Only students who completed the ACT and/or SAT Assessment were included in the study. The sample population consisted of 304 freshmen who were academically suspended from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the Conclusion of 1985-86 school term. It also included 304 students selected at random from the remaining 2,695 students who were classified as freshmen at the conclusion of the 1985-86 term. All students in the sample completed at least 6 hours of graded course work and no more than 27 hours. The design of this study was ex-post facto. The method used for analyzing the data was stepwise discriminant analysis. SPSSx (version 2.2) was the computer software that was used. A Wilks' lambda was computed in the analysis to measure group differences and an F-ratio was computed to determine the significance of Wilks'. This study concluded that there was a statistically significant relationship between academic status of freshmen at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the conclusion of the 1985-86 school term and high school class rank, scores attained on the ACT, high school quartile rank at the time of graduation, number of credit hours attempted during the freshman year, and cumulative grade point average at the end of the freshman year. Only one of the variables, gender of student, was found to have no statistically significant relationship with academic suspension. When taken in combination, cumulative grade point average, credit hours attempted and scores attained on the ACT best predicted the academic suspension of freshmen at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the conclusion of the 1985-86 school term.
Subject Area
School administration
Recommended Citation
Shada, Michael Lee, "Predictors of academic status of freshmen at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln" (1990). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9118476.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9118476