Self-Concept in excellent and average university students

Abstract

We seek to analyse how the best students on entry to University work in order to transfer it to the rest of the University community. We used the AF5 (Autoconcepto Forma 5; Self-concept 5 Way) to assess the students’ self-concept of a sample of 135 excellent students selected from 11 degrees from 9 centers of the Polytechnical University of Valencia, and we compared the results with those of a sample of 114 average students of the same centers. We found that excellent students developed better self-concept (Academic-Labour, Familiar and Emotional) than average students, who had better Physical and Social self-concept. We also found that self-concept had an influence on the academic achievement, positive in the case of Academic self-concept and negative in the case of Physical self-concept.

Keywords: Self-concept, university students, excellent students, academic achievement.