A new report released earlier this month suggests colleges may have a more successful female student body than male.

The National Freshman Attitudes Report by Noel-Levitz indicates the findings stem from the different attitudes men and women have toward studying.

Noel-Levitz, an organization geared toward helping college campuses exceed in their enrollment, marketing, and student success goals, surveyed nearly 100,000 incoming freshmen at 292 private and two-and four-year public colleges during their initial weeks on campus.

The study found that both men and women approach their freshman year highly motivated, but male students didn't list having study habits and high intellectual interests as often as women did.

"This study has to do with what percentage of men and women respond in different ways [to college]," said Pam Jennings, associate vice president of marketing for Noel-Levitz. "Overall, students have a high expectation that they are going to complete a degree when they come in as brand new freshmen, but that isn't happening."

The report suggests that the disparities between the two genders may begin with the individual academic methods males and females use, such as studying and reading, to be successful in the classroom.

The findings show that freshmen men are more likely than women to admit that their studying is irregular and unpredictable and that books have never been a source of excitement. The numbers demonstrate that women enjoy reading more and taking careful notes, which is a factor in why women are doing well, according to the study.

Penn State Professor of sociology, demography, and education George Farkas said he attributes these academic differences to a mixture of biology and culture.

"I do studies of achievement and take them back to kindergarten," he said. "There are gender differences in doing good school work, in paying attention, being organized and persisting in academic tasks. I see those differences in just first grade, and they are large, so there do seem to be gender differences for older males and females," he said.

This gender gap trend is not unheard of, however.

An article published in the American Sociological Review entitled The Growing Female Advantage in College Completion: The Role of Family Background and Academic Achievement in August 2006 shows the culmination of this gender discrepancy has actually been going on since the 1960s.

"Women are more out distancing men in college education than was the case in the past," Farkas said. "The crossover point goes back a while, it just wasn't noticed so much."

Collegian staff writer Anna Zagari contributed to this report.