Abstract: Personal initiative is one of the key elements of university students' employability. This study applies questionnaire and focus group as its methodology and selects 732 undergraduates from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics as the sample. The questionnaire on the personal initiative of university students consists of four dimensions: behavior patterns, learning initiative, difficulties response, and interpersonal communication. The result shows that University students' personal initiative is modest overall, while significant differences exist in personal trait variables such as gender, grade and location of their hometown. It is found that influencing factors of the students' personal initiative are learning initiative, overcoming-barriers and interpersonal communication. To improve the students' personal initiative, the paper suggests that universities should realize the importance of students' personal initiative and offer positive study environment and measures to advance their personal initiative.

Key words: university students, personal initiative, behavior patterns, learning initiative, overcoming-barriers, interpersonal communication