Thrivers_and_divers_using_non_academic_measures_to_predict_college_success_and_failure.pdf

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES
THRIVERS AND DIVERS:
USING NON-ACADEMIC MEASURES TO PREDICT COLLEGE SUCCESS AND FAILURE
Graham Beattie
Jean-William P. Laliberté
Philip Oreopoulos
Working Paper 22629
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
September 2016
We are very grateful to Aloysius Siow, Nathalie Bau, Yosh Halberstam, Uros Petronijevic for
helpful discussions and to seminar participants at the University of Toronto for comments. We
also wish to thank Aaron de Mello for spectacular web development and research assistance, and
Matthew Hendrickson for helping us compile the administrative data. Financial support for this
research was provided by the Ontario Human Capital Research and Innovation Fund, a Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant (#435-2015-0180), and a JPAL Pilot
Grant. Any omissions or errors are our own responsibility. The views expressed herein are those
of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic
Research.
NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been
peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies
official NBER publications.
© 2016 by Graham Beattie, Jean-William P. Laliberté, and Philip Oreopoulos. All rights
reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit
permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.

Thrivers and Divers: Using Non-Academic Measures to Predict College Success and Failure
Graham Beattie, Jean-William P. Laliberté, and Philip Oreopoulos
NBER Working Paper No. 22629
September 2016
JEL No. I2,I23,J24
ABSTRACT
We collect a comprehensive set of non-academic characteristics for a representative sample of
incoming freshman to explore which measures best predict the wide variance in first-year college
performance unaccounted for by past grades. We focus our attention on student outliers. Students
whose first-year college average is far below expectations (divers) have a high propensity for
procrastination – they self-report cramming for exams and wait longer before starting
assignments. They are also considerably less conscientious than their peers. Divers are more
likely to express superficial goals, hoping to 'get rich' quickly. In contrast, students who exceed
expectations (thrivers) express more philanthropic goals, are purpose-driven, and are willing to
study more hours per week to obtain the higher GPA they expect. A simple seven-variable
average of these key non-academic variables does well in predicting college achievement relative
to adding more variables or letting a machine-algorithm choose. Our results, descriptive in
nature, warrant further research on the importance of non-linearities for the design and targeting
of successful interventions in higher-education.