The Correlation between Talent and Academic Achievement of Universitas Advent Indonesia Students Batch 2016

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare students’ academic performance between those justified as talented or not talented in the study program that they chose. Thepopulation of the study was the new students of batch 2016. However, not allstudents join the talent test, only 384. The talent test was conducted by aprofessional talent test institution, while the academic achievement was based onthe average GPA for the first and second semesters. The talent test result isclassified into three parts, namely recommended, doubted, and not recommended.Based on the talent test, there were 365 candidate students recommended to takethe study programs that they chose, 17 of those were doubted and only 2 of thosewere not recommended. Based on the talent test, the students were asked todetermine their choice before taking any courses. Most of the students chose theprogram for the first time, some students changed their mind and moved to anotherstudy program within UNAI, and only few students changed their mind and did notenroll in UNAI at all. The study showed that the correlation coefficient betweenthe talent test result and the academic result was low, with a correlation coefficient(r) of 0.125. Based on the ANOVA test, it was found that there is a difference inthe academic achievement between students who were recommended, doubted ornot recommended to take the courses that they chose. If the talent does notsignificantly correlate with the achievement, then it is interesting to study in futurewhat other significant factors, besides the talent, that influence the academicachievement.