DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2019.v07i12.005

Pages: 832-839

This study was aimed to analyze the relationship between pre-college academic achievement and interest in college major with first year academic achievement at Haramaya University. In order to analyze the contribution of pre-college academic achievements in predicting first year GPA, 496 students’ pre-college academic achievements were correlated with the students’ first year GPA. One way analysis of variance was used to analyze the difference in first year GPA of the three academically comparable groups of students were placed in their respective departments by their first choice, second choice and third choice. The key findings of this study are: (1) there is statistically significant difference in first year academic performance between the three comparable groups of students in their precollege achievement indicating that placement of students into different departments without considering their interest has an impact on the academic performance of students (2). The combination of entrance exam and preparatory GPA. As predictors of college GPA, yielded multiple regression coefficients accounted for 30.2% that was significantly larger than that was obtained from the independent regression of entrance exam score whose sole contribution was only 11.1%. The paper concludes that, firstly, interest-major congruence has a significant impact on students’ college performance. Secondly, the students’ preparatory exam scores and entrance exam scores, if used together, have higher predictive weight than using one of them alone.