Underachievement is many-sided.

The concept of underachievement, though widely used and voluminously researched, is still ill-defined. The reason seems to be that underachievers are defined merely in terms of the discrepancy between their predicted and earned grades. So classified, the groups are too heterogeneous to be psychologically meaningful. There are different types of achievers and under- achievers who need to be identified and different educational climates that need to be studied, if the concept of underachievement is to become productive in our thinking about high school and college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]