The Project on Student Development in Small Colleges is a 5-year research and action program which has studied institutional characteristics, student characteristics, attrition, and student development in 13 small colleges across the country. The results of this study on personality development indicated that personality development during college is characterized by several major areas of change. At 12 strikingly different small colleges that attract widely varying students, the direction and magnitude of net change on 13 Omnibus Personality Inventory scales was very similar. When subgroups of students with similar entering characteristics were studies at different colleges, direction and magnitude of change varied. The variations in change were systematically related to college emphasis, student characteristics, student-faculty relationships, teaching, study activities, and reasons for study. Where a comfortable fit occurred between student and college, personality development proceeded along several widely shared vectors of change. For deviant students within different colleges, vectors of change differed, depending upon the particular relationship between the student and his college. (Author/AF)