UNDERSTANDING OUR STUDENTS: DOES HIGH SELF-ESTEEM PRODUCE GOOD ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AMONG UNDERGRADUATE

Self-esteem is one of the important elements for undergraduates to acquire. Educators have also long sought to build upon student’s self-esteem and in doing so may subsequently give them good examination scores. Students with high self-esteem have also been strongly associated in obtaining good results. This study investigates the student’s self-esteem across three undergraduate subjects and whether it has any effect on their examination scores. The present investigation revealed that across the three undergraduate subjects, high examination scoring students did not have a strong majority of high self-esteem students. Low examination scoring students also did not have a strong majority of low self-esteem students. The group of students with the high self-esteem across the three subjects did not produce high examination scores as was expected, and some of the students in the group with low self-esteem did produce high examination scores. Given these findings, educators may probe other areas that may be strongly related to examination performance.