Do gender and personality traits (BFI-10) influence achievement of success?

There exists a body of literature on impact of personality traits on academic performance. But there appears to be a gap in literature when it comes to impact of personality traits on extracurricular activities. In order to fill the gap, the paper focuses on impact of personality traits: extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, as well as gender on success in extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities were such as participation of students in the faculty competitions, Slovak competitions for students, international competitions for students and taking some of the first three or five places, Student personality of the year and participation in a special programme aimed at talented students. The research was conducted in Slovakia on a sample of university students. Personality traits were measured using Big Five Inventory-10 (BFI-10). While previous studies, which were focused predominantly on grades, found a positive link to conscientiousness, the findings of this research are that success in extracurricular activities is positively linked to openness to experience. Students with a high degree of openness to experience are curious, broad in interests and more open to experience extraordinary activities. This fact seems to be more important to success in various competitions than conscientiousness that influences the grades.