SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2005 ◆ VOL 46 NO 5 501 Sense of Identity and Collegiate Academic Achievement John W. Lounsbury Beverly C. Huffstetler Frederick T. Leong Lucy W. Gibson In a sample of 434 university freshmen, Sense of Identity was found to be positively related to GPA, even controlling for the Big Five personality traits of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Openness. Similar correlations were found for racial and gender subgroups. When all study variables entered a stepwise multiple regression analysis to predict GPA variance, Sense of Identity accounted for 9%; Emotional Stability, 1%. Results were discussed vis-a-vis Chickering and Reisser’s (1993) and Hamrick, Evans, and Schuh’s (2002) emphasis on identity as a key outcome of college student development. Directions for future research and study limitations were described. This paper addresses the relationship between sense of identity and academic performance of college students. As noted by Hamrick, Evans, and Schuh (2002), “The college experience is widely regarded as offering many opportunities for students to develop, among other things, personal and professional identity” (p. 135). As Madison (1969) observed, college represents a unique and highly appropriate setting for studying identity. The college context “plays a critical role in identity formation” (Nakkula, 2003, p. 9). For many students, college provides the single setting “within which the combination of skill and relationship occurs on a regular basis, day in and day out.” (p. 15). The late adolescent years (e.g., 18 to 22) are regarded “as a crucial time for identity formation” (Muuss, 1996, p. 62) and 98% of all first-year college/university students (the group exam- ined in the current study) are in the 18 to 22 years age range (Cooperative Institutional Research Program, 2005). There has been extensive theorizing and considerable empirical research on identity. Much of the psychological literature on identity revolves around Erikson’s (1968) stages of identity development and the four major identity statuses articulated by Marcia (1980)—diffusion, moratorium, foreclosure, and achievement, which adolescents experi- ence in their quest for identity (see, e.g., Berger, 2001). College has been viewed as an institution that permits students to function in a state of identity moratorium where they can “sample a variety of academic areas before settling on one” (p. 437). The first year or two of college may represent the most tolerant, facilitative societal context for “youths seeking self-definition” and identity formation (Kroger, 1997). Chickering and Reisser (1993) viewed the stabilization of identity as the primary task for adolescents and they used it as “a logical anchor point” for synthesizing multiple, diverse strands of “data about college student development into a general framework that could be used to guide educational practice” (p. 22). They proposed seven major areas or vectors of college student development— John W. Lounsbury is Professor of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and President of Resource Associates, Inc.; Beverly C. Huffstetler is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Frederick T. Leong is Professor of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Lucy W. Gibson is Vice-President of Resource Associates, Inc.