PREDICTIVE VALIDITY OF POST UNIFIED TERTIARY
MATRICULATION EXAMINATION SCORES AGAINST
CUMULATIVE GRADE POINT AVERAGE OF
UNDERGRADUATES IN BENUE STATE.
The successive introduction of different complementary criteria for admission
into Nigerian Universities and other higherinstitutionsisinformed by the desire
to get candidates properly screened to ensure that only the most qualified are
admitted. This also presupposesthat there has ever been the felt-need to continue
to improve on the admission process in order to ensure that those admitted have
the potential to succeed in the task ahead of them. The latest of these admission
criteria, which was introduced and later cancelled, is Post-Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination (Post-UTME). This was purported to be an aptitude
test that should not only select suitably qualified candidates for admission but
also predict their performances in the undergraduate programme. This paper
assesses the relationship between performance of students in Post-UTME and
their performance in the undergraduate programme in the universitiesin Benue
State, with a view to determining the potency or otherwise of the cancelled
aptitude test. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was adopted
to select 376 out of 6301 students admitted by three universities in Benue State,
nd during the 2011/2012 session. Post-UTME scores of those sampled and their 2
year Cumulative Grade point Average (CGPA) were collected, using a selfconstructed
proforma and correlated using Spearman ranked order correlation
2
(r). The coefficient of determination (r ) was also calculated to ascertain the
extent to which variations in student's CGPA are explained by Post-UTME
scores.Basedonthe findings,appropriate recommendationsweremade
Aduloju, M. O., Adikwu, Odihi and Tsanger Terkura
PREDICTIVE VALIDITY OF POST UNIFIED TERTIARY MATRICULATION EXAMINATION SCORES AGAINST CUMULATIVE GRADE POINT AVERAGE OF UNDERGRADUATES IN BENUE STATE.
The successive introduction of different complementary criteria for admission into Nigerian Universities and other higherinstitutionsisinformed by the desire to get candidates properly screened to ensure that only the most qualified are admitted. This also presupposesthat there has ever been the felt-need to continue to improve on the admission process in order to ensure that those admitted have the potential to succeed in the task ahead of them. The latest of these admission criteria, which was introduced and later cancelled, is Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (Post-UTME). This was purported to be an aptitude test that should not only select suitably qualified candidates for admission but also predict their performances in the undergraduate programme. This paper assesses the relationship between performance of students in Post-UTME and their performance in the undergraduate programme in the universitiesin Benue State, with a view to determining the potency or otherwise of the cancelled aptitude test. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was adopted to select 376 out of 6301 students admitted by three universities in Benue State, nd during the 2011/2012 session. Post-UTME scores of those sampled and their 2 year Cumulative Grade point Average (CGPA) were collected, using a selfconstructed proforma and correlated using Spearman ranked order correlation 2 (r). The coefficient of determination (r ) was also calculated to ascertain the extent to which variations in student's CGPA are explained by Post-UTME scores.Basedonthe findings,appropriate recommendationsweremade