Students in many countries are required to take an entrance examination into their academic institutions. Some of these institutions administer certain types of wellestablished globally recognized examinations like TOEFL, IELTS, SAT 1, ACT, etc. while others administer locally-developed examinations to screen students for pursuing their academic career. Iranian Islamic Azad University Entrance Examination (IAUEE) is a good example of the latter. The main purpose of the present research was to study the predictive value of the Islamic Azad University Entrance Examination (IAUEE) in Iran administered to those applied for English Language courses. It, furthermore, attempted to investigate the English Language students’ academic achievement regarding their GPA and any probable correlation between GPA and their entrance admission test results and their gender and field of study. To conduct the research more than 282 students who were admitted to study in all English language fields were randomly selected. Data were collected regarding their performances (both their overall score and English proficiency subtest) in Entrance Examination and their GPA during the first 3 years of their study in Islamic Azad University, Roudehen Branch. Data analysis indicates that Iranian IAUUEE can be used as an authentic yardstick to predict the future success of the students in those fields. Moreover, the validity index is of a more bona fide predictive value among ELT students than those in English literature or translation.

Keywords: Predictive validity, university entrance examination, Islamic Azad University, grade-point average (GPA).