Does feeling more belonging increase your academic success?

A sense of belonging is found to have a noticeable effect on success in academic studies. However, sense of belonging might be confusing to people who made a major life transition and changed the community that they are part of. Former ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel often must build their sense of belonging to their new (often secular) environment and attend higher education within the same few years. Our research checked the correlation between the general sense of belonging of former ultra-orthodox Jews, their sense of belonging to the academic institute they attend and their feeling of success . We distributed a survey among former ultra-orthodox Jewish students and recently graduated students from academic institutions in Israel. Based on 98 respondents, we found that time is a decisive factor. Recent leavers of an ultra-orthodox community showed a weak correlation between the sense of belonging – especially the sense of general belonging – and the feeling of self-success, while a few years after their leaving of their community the sense of belonging is less correlated to the feeling of success, insinuating that other factors may have a deeper effect on the success of recent leavers than it has on more veteran leavers of an ultra-orthodox community.