Teacher candidates have different achievement rankings to be enrolled in a university. Therefore, this study aims to compare the academic self-efficacy of primary school teacher candidates at the first and fourth grades in terms of their university entrance success rankings through some variables. The research was conducted by causal comparison method. The universe of the research consists of 621 classroom teacher candidates in the first and fourth years in three universities in the 2017-2018 academic year. Since all pre-service teachers were reached, the sample was not taken from the universe. Voluntary 427 primary school teacher candidates participated in the study. The data were collected by means of “Academic Self Efficacy Scale”. According to the results of the research study, when the academic self-efficacy of first year teacher candidates with low, medium and high university entrance success rankings was compared, a significant difference was found in favour of teacher candidates with high success rankings in technical skill sub-dimension. It was found that this situation did not cause a significant difference in terms of academic self-efficacy in the fourth year. The academic selfefficacy of primary school teacher candidates showed significant differences according to gender, grade level, university where they study and their academic grade point average.

Keywords: University entrance success ranking, academic self-efficacy, primary school teacher candidate