Self-regulation and ability predictors of academic success during college: A predictive validity study

A topic of long-standing interest for university administrators and faculty is how to help!rst-year college students succeed aca-demically. On average, only 73.6 % of college freshman return for their sophomore year (National Center for Higher Education Management Systems [NCHEMS], 2007). Although academic success in college requires some preexisting capabilities, these abilities do not always di"erentiate high-achieving students from low-achieving students (Kitsantas, 2002; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2008). By contrast, there is an extensive body of evi-dence with regard to academic performance suggesting that dif-ferences in low- and high-achieving students are closely linked to an individual’s level of self-regulation (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2008). Self-regulation refers to the degree to which students are “metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active partici-pants of their own learning process ” (Zimmerman, 1989, p. 329). Considering the above evidence, it would be interesting to deter