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In this study Holland's RIASEC Model of vocational personalities and the Five‐Factor Model of personality are used (i) to assess individual differences among study majors and (ii) to predict educational achievement. A sample of 934 last‐year students who enrolled in different academic majors filled out Dutch/Flemish adaptations of the NEO‐PI‐R (Costa and McCrae, 1992) and the Self‐Directed Search (Holland, 1977; 1979). The results show that both models are useful to describe differences among different majors. Conscientiousness proves to be a general predictor of grades and study career. For the other Big Five dimensions, except for Agreeableness, major and/or gender specific relationships with educational outcomes are observed. Holland's interest dimensions are not related to educational achievement, except for some moderate gender or major specific correlations with the Investigative and the Artistic scales. Suggestions for future research regarding educational streaming and counselling are discussed.
Fruyt et al. (Sun,) studied this question.