General Personality Traits of Engineering Students and Their Relationship with Academic Achievement

The purpose of this study was to explore whether and to what extent general personality traits based on the Big Five model correlate with and explain unique variance of academic success among undergraduate civil engineering students. In total, 151 college civil and environmental engineering students completed the 240-item NEO Personality Inventory-3 (NEO-PI-3) and released their GPA and SAT scores. We conducted analyses of descriptive statistics, correlation, and hierarchical regression using the IBM statistics software SPSS Version 21. Neuroticism (positively), Extraversion (negatively), and Agreeableness (negatively) were significantly correlated with current term GPA. Neuroticism (positively) and Agreeableness (negatively) were significantly correlated with cumulative GPA. Conscientiousness explained unique variance in the cumulative GPA. The findings from this research indicate that the Big Five personality traits are a significant predictor of academic achievement of engineering students. The results highlight the importance of examining non-academic factors in explaining variance in academic achievement of engineering students.