This paper introduces a correlation–polarization potential with high order terms for vibrational excitation in electron–molecule scattering.The new polarization potential generalizes the two-term approximation so that it can better reflect the dependence of correlation and polarization effects on the position coordinate of the scattering electron.It applies the new potential on the vibrational excitation scattering from N2 in an energy range which includes the 2Πg shape resonance.The good agreement of theoretical resonant peaks with experiments shows that polarization potentials with high order terms are important and should be included in vibrational excitation scattering.