Student’s academic performance occupies a very important place in education as well as in the learning process. It is considered as a key criterion to judge one’s total potentialities and capacities (Nuthana & Yenagi, 2009) which are frequently measured by the examination results. It is used to pass judgment on the quality of education offered by academic institutions. In fact, it is still the most topical debate in higher learning institutions that caused great concern to educators and researchers due to the alarming examination performance of students.

In the report of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) on performance of graduates in the different licensure and board examinations, data show that performance of graduates has been declining in the last ten years. The overall passing rates are quite low (around 36% on the average). In the 2010 professional licensure examinations given by the PRC, almost 70 percent of college graduates in the country failed and, last year, only 125,419 of the 345,182 or 36.3 percent college and technical school graduates passed their respective professional eligibility examinations as per PRC records. These statistics were based on the results of licensure examinations for 45 groups of professionals. Among the lowest number of passing rates were posted by: elementary teachers (15.4 percent); secondary teachers (23.3 percent); electronics engineers (23.5 percent); and registered electrical engineers (31.9 percent) (Philippine Education_Sector Assessment Project, 2011). What explains these performance discrepancies? Multiple reports indicate that academic success cannot be predicted by a single variable. It is dependent upon many factors; both cognitive and non-cognitive.

Numerous studies have been carried out which focused on cognitive factors as predictors of academic success. Recently, there has been a growing