The relationship between personality traits of international students and academic achievement

The aim of this study was to study the relationship between personality traits of postgraduate international students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and their academic achievement. In order to study the students' personality traits, big five inventory (BFI) by John (1998) was dispersed among 146 postgraduate international students, divided into two groups, 114 male and 32 female students, who were working towards their master degree. These students were asked to mention their last CGPA, which is used as a criterion for collegiate academic performance. Descriptive analysis and inferential Correlation were calculated for the statistical analysis of the data. From the five dimensions analyzed (Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience and Neuroticism, only two hypotheses (Conscientiousness and Openness to experience) were highly significant at p<.001 level.