User:Purple-chameleon/sandbox

Academic achievement or (academic) performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has achieved their short or long-term educational goals. Cumulative GPA and completion of educational degrees such as High School and Bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement.

Academic achievement is commonly measured through examinations or continuous assessment s but there is no general agreement on how it is best evaluated or which aspects are most important —procedural knowledge such as skills or declarative knowledge such as facts. Furthermore, there are inconclusive results over which individual factors successfully predict academic performance, elements such as test anxiety, environment, motivation, and emotions require consideration when developing models of school achievement.

Cognitive Factors
Cognitive factors or learning factors, are the extent to which a person’s individual capabilities can influence their academic or learning performance. These factors include cognitive functions like attention, memory, and reasoning. Cognitive factors are often measured through examinations, college admission boards use standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT when evaluating prospective candidates. Undergraduate students with high academic performance present mature learning beliefs, and a strong knowledge integration.

Non-Cognitive
Non-cognitive factors or skills, are a set of "attitudes, behaviors, and strategies" that promotes academic and professional success, such as academic self-efficacy, self control, motivation, expectancy and goal setting theories, emotional intelligence, and determination. To create attention on factors other than those measured by cognitive test scores sociologists Bowles and Gintis coined the term in the the 1970's. The term serves as a distinction of cognitive factors, which are measured by teachers through tests and quizzes. Non-cognitive skills are increasingly gaining popularity because they provide a better explanation for academic and professional outcomes.

Motivation
Motivation is the reasoning behind an individuals actions. Research has found that students with higher academic performance, motivation and persistence demonstrate utilization of intrinsic goals, when compared with students who focus on extrinsic ones. Furthermore, students who are motivated to improve upon their previous or upcoming performance tend to perform better academically than peers with lower motivation. In other words, students with higher need for achievement have greater academic performance.

Self-Control
Self-Control, in the academic setting, is related to terms such as self-discipline, self-regulation, delay of gratification and impulse control. Baumeister, Vohs, and Tice defined self-control as “the capacity for altering one’s own responses, especially to bring them into line with standards such as ideals, values, morals, and social expectations, and to support the attainment of long-term goals.” In other words, self-control is the ability to prioritize long-term goals over the temptation of short-term impulses. Self-control is usually measured through self completed questionnaires. Researchers often use the Self-Control Scale developed by Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone in 2004.

Through a longitudinal study of the marshmallow test, researchers found a relationship between the time spent waiting for the second marshmallow and higher academic achievement. However, this finding only applied for participants who had the marshmallow in plain site and were placed without any distraction tactics.

High locus of control, where an individual attributes success to personal decision making and positive behaviors such as discipline, is a ramification of self-control. High locus of control has been found to have a positive predictive relationship with high collegiate GPA.

Extracurricular Activities
Organized extracurricular activities have yielded a positive relationship with high academic performance, including increasing attendance rates, school engagement, GPA, postsecondary education, as well as a decrease in drop out rates and depression. Additionally, positive developmental outcomes have been found in youth that engage in organized extracurricular activities High school athletics have been linked with strong academic performance, particularly among urban youth. However, involvement in athletics has been linked to increased alcohol consumption and abuse for high school students along with increased truancy.