Predicting First-Year Academic Success of African American and White Students at Predominately White Institutions

The purpose of this study is to determine how models utilizing demographic, academic, and social pre-college characteristics are related to first-year academic success of White and African American students at PWIs. The demographic pre-college factors include students& race and gender; the academic factors include ACT composite score and high school GPA; and the social factors include the distance from home, percent of African American in students& high school, and parents& highest education level. First-year academic success is defined by the three dependent variables: first-year retention, first-year GPA, and first-year credit hour completion percentage. The results of the study showed that identified models utilizing demographic, academic and social predictors, significantly predict first-year retention, first-year GPA, and first-year credit hour percentage completion. Each model explained different variances of academic success