Aims: Monitoring of educational status of the students is a duty of educational systems of universities. Cognitive abilities of the brain play an axial role in learning and academic success. The purpose of present study was the evaluation of correlation between educational status and cognitive abilities in university students.

Methods: This cross-sectional case study was done among the students of Shahid Beheshti University in 2012 and 395 persons were selected with achievable sampling method. The used tool was the questionnaire with 30 items of cognitive abilities in 7 subscales of “correlation of memory”, “inhibitory control and selective attention”, “decision making”, “planning”, “sustain attention”, “social cognition” and “cognitive flexibility”. Pearson correlation test was used to evaluate the correlation between grade point average and executive functions.

Results: A significant correlation was seen between grade point average and all the cognitive abilities and the subscales correlation of memory, inhibitory control and selective attention, decision making, planning, sustain attention and cognitive flexibility (all were in p=0.0001 level), except social cognition (p=0.969).

Conclusion: The subscales of the cognitive abilities i.e. “correlation of memory”, “inhibitory control and selective attention”, “decision making”, “planning”, “sustain attention” and “cognitive flexibility” have a positive relation with students’ grade point average.