This report is intended as a preliminary survey of the problems in the collection and sociological analysis of student slang. Dealing with the notion that every speaker handles a variety of registers and tends to choose among them in accordance with the particular social situation in which he finds himself, this study isolates some of the particular lexical varieties which compose the academic lingo of six American Eastern Seaboard colleges, particularly that of the University of Virginia. A series of questionnaires was developed and distributed among students at the schools (examples of which are included in the appendices) in order to elicit "the vital idiom of American college youth" and the contextual and circumstantial situations in which it is acquired and used within and without the linguistic community. It was hypothesized that each university community harbors its own unique set of academic lexical vocabulary which is fully intelligible only to initiates; this unique and elaborate lexicon thus serves to achieve group identity and has many other social implications. It was concluded that only through systematic and repeated oral and written confrontations can a linguist determine a student's knowledge and consistent application of the sociolinguistic rules governing his academic lexicon, both within and without the linguistic community. (Author/AM)