The purpose of the study was to examine the academic performance of student admitted for NCE program in colleges of education using JAMB, WAEC, NECO, and NABTEB as the bases for direct entry admission exercise and compare with the academic performance of students admitted through college remedial exercise in order to ascertain the validity reliability and usability of standardized examination, if it is worthy of recommendation for placement evaluation in colleges of education and university system. Four different departments were selected at random, academic status of 284 students from the four departments were extracted and used for the study 116 students from first group being direct entry students and 168 students from the second group being Pre-NCE candidates. The mean CGPA of two groups were compared from the four departments, the results revealed that mean CGPA of the direct entry students falls between 2.0 and 2.5 in all the departments from NCE I to NCE III while that of Pre-NCE students were between 2.45 and 3.0 at all levels for the four departments. This implies that students admitted through direct entry scores can be classified as third Class students (Merit) while those admitted through Pre-NCE screening can be classified as Second Class Lower Division (Credit) students. The results reveals that standard test is not 100% worthy of consideration as the only criteria for admission into higher institutions of learning as it does not give us the best candidates for admission at most times. Key Words:

Keywords: Standardized test, examination, placement evaluation