Language background, educational background, and scores on a variety of achievement and aptitude tests were examined for their relation to the first semester performance of 1, 123 freshman students at the Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia. Among the test data, proficiency in English language skills was most strongly related to university grades. Scores from tests requiring skill in the official Ethiopian language, Amharic, predicted poorly to university performance, and tests of mathematic-numerical ability showed moderate to weak predictive utility. The only language or educational background data related to performance was educational mobility, the students' tendency to move to areas of greater educational resources during their pre-university education. This mobility was interpreted as reflecting strong motivation for education, a factor which deserves further research attention.
