The Older Student as an Undergraduate

Abstract

This article explores prior research regarding academic capabilities of older undergraduate students and reports on a study of the intellectual and socio emotional orientations as measured by the Omnibus Personality Inventory— Form F of a sampling of younger (18-22 years) and older (26 and above years) undergraduate students within an undergraduate university setting. A typology of differential characteristics of younger and older undergraduates is described. Prior research noted that older undergraduates gained similar, if not higher, gradepoint aver ages as compared to younger undergraduates. In this present study older undergraduates dis played significantly higher scores in the areas of personal integration, lack of anxiety, theoretical orientation, and analytical problem solving. Younger undergraduates displayed significantly higher scores focused on environmental, esthetic, and novel stimuli and on impulse expression. In analyzing scale scores according to age increments, personal integration and lack of anxiety score scales increased with age increments and the impulse expression scale decreased with age in crements.