admission criteria

The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which academic admission criteria predict prospective teachers’ competency during teacher education program. To this end, a total of 186 prospective teachers majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Teacher Education University in Iran were selected as the convenience sample of the study. They completed two questionnaires, Prospective Teachers’ Professional Attitude and Prospective Teachers’ Professional Identity. The participants’ high school GPA, university entrance score, and university GPA were also obtained. The results of Pearson product-moment correlations indicated a significant positive correlation among academic measures of high school GPA, university entrance score, and university GPA but no significant correlation was detected between these academic measures and nonacademic measures of professional identity and professional attitude. The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that the two admission criteria had just predictive validity for university academic achievement; however they could not predict prospective teachers’ professional attitude or their professional identity. Based on the findings of this study, it would be concluded that the academic measures used for admitting candidates into the program have low predictive validity for predicting non-academic attributes of teacher competenc