Relationship between University Entrance Exam Result and Cumulative Grade Point Average at Graduation of Undergraduate Degree Students in Wollega University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to see if there is a statistically significant relationship between Ethiopian university entrance examination results (UEE) and cumulative grade point average (CGPA) at graduation for three-year programs. A correlation study design was employed, and a simple random sampling technique was used to select 23 programmes, which consisted of 570 male and 345 female students out of the 43 three-year programmes with a total of 628 male and 448 female students. The results of the study indicated that even though there was a positive relationship between UEE and CGPA, it was found that the relationship between the two variables was non-linear, and thus UEE alone was statistically insignificant to predict CGPA. It was also identified that UEE, together with the gender and field of study (programme) variables, has a statistically significant relationship with CGPA. Thus, it has been concluded that using UEE as the only variable for predicting students’ success in CGPA is misleading; as such achievements could be affected by a number of other variables.