This study reports the performance of five thousand one hundred and eighty three undergraduate and graduate students on a language proficiency test called Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT). It consists of one hundred traditional multiple choice items selected from the disclosed Test of English as a Foreign Language and measures the listening and reading comprehension abilities as well as structural knowledge. It was taken by students majoring in five branches of knowledge, i.e., agriculture, basic sciences, engineering, humanities and social sciences, and medical sciences, in Iran. The One-Way ANOVA analysis of scores showed that female test takers scored significantly higher than males not only on the MSRT but also on its structure, listening and reading comprehension subtests. The same analysis also showed that engineering test takers scored significantly higher than agriculture, basic sciences and humanities and social sciences on the listening comprehension subtest and MSRT. The scores of engineering and medical science test takers on the reading comprehension subtest were, however, significantly higher than humanities and social science test takers only. The results are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.

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