chool, colleges and universities have no worth without student. Students are most essential asset for any educational institute. The social and economic development of the country is directly linked with student academic performance. The students' performance (academic achievement) plays an important role in producing the best quality graduates who will become great leader and manpower for the country thus responsible for the country's economic and social development (Ali et.al, 2009). Student academic performance measurement has received considerable attention in previous research, it is challenging aspects of academic literature, and science student performance are affected due to social, psychological, economic, environmental and personal factors. These factors strongly influence on the student performance, but these factors vary from person to person and country to country.

From the last few years in Pakistan literacy rate and education improved and most of the instituted in Pakistan improving the educational level and produce well educated, competitive and skilled person, those meet dynamic growing market requirement. That's a reason the researcher find out such factors that effecting student performance, especially in rural areas where student face lot of problem.

Previously mostly study of student academic performance conducting on such issues like gender difference, teacher's education and teaching style, class environment, socio economic factor and family education background. The finding of this study varies from region to region and their results differ in cities and rural areas.

This research is focuses on the private colleges in Pakistan. Students of private colleges of Rawalpindi and Islamabad are taken as population and focuses on the result of the student performance and their achievements in the academic year.

We measure the student academic performance through several ways like CGPA, GPA and their test result. Most of the researcher around the word used the GPA to measure the student performance (Galiher, 2006;Darling, 2005;Broh, 2000;Stephen & Schaban, 2002). They used GPA to measure student performance in particular semester. Some other researcher, they measure student performance through the result of particular subject or the previous year result (Hijazi & Naqvi, 2006;Hake, 1988;& tho.1994).

Previous studies focuses on different factors such class schedules, class size, English text books, homework, environment of the class, technology used in the class and exams systems, extracurricular activities, family and work activities, financial, and etc. The study may helpful for both college's policy makers and parents of the students. It helps the college administration to design and implement the policies to improve the students' performance and the quality of education by changing the attitude of students towards learning, facilitating students and improving the teaching procedures. Parents can use the outcomes of the study to solve the students' problems especially financial problems and to look after them. It may also create awareness among students about their rights and responsibilities to achieve quality education.

What are the important factors that affect students' academic performance?

IV.

The objective of this research paper is to explore the important factors that affect the academic performance of the students.

V.

Previously a lot of research has been done on this topic. Different researchers researched on various variables and a lot of different variables were studied. This research is different in a way that it is the first research in which a variable "proper guidance" is studied, moreover in Pakistan only one research was carried out on this topic and it was conducted by Abid Hussain in 2006 and that too was based on the findings of school's whereas this research is conducted on colleges.

Our contribution to this study is that we explore the four factors that affect students' academic performance.

These factors are students' communication skills, learning facilities, proper guidance and family stress. In Pakistan scenario, many researchers have done a lot of work on communication, learning facilities and family stress. This research will be helpful for the parents as well as the teachers of the students to guide them properly and as per their abilities. H H1: There is a positive relationship between communication and student performance. c) Learning Facilities Karemera (2003) found that students' performance is significantly correlated with satisfaction with academic environment and the facilities of library, computer lab and etc. in the institution. With regard to background variables, he found a positive effect of high school performance and school achievement he found no statistical evidence of significant association between family income level and academic performance of the student.

Robert & Sampson (2011), found that the member of educational board will be educated and their impact on school is positive, for professional development it is essential for student learning.

The students who are actively engage in the learning process are observed to have a positive correlation with the CGP. A Study effort from student and the proper use of the facilities provided by the institution to the student, a good match between students' learning style and are positively affect the student's performance (Norhidayah Ali, et. al., 2009) Young (1999), held the view that student performances are linked with use of library and level of their parental education. The use of the library positively affected the student performance.

The academic environment is the effectivevariable for students and has positive relationship with fathers' education and grade level (Kirmani & Siddiquah, 2008).

H2: There is a positive relationship between learning facilities and student performance.

(2006), students' academic accomplishments and activities, perceptions of their coping strategies and positive attributions, and background characteristics (i.e., family income, parents' level of education, guidance from parents and number of negative situations in the home) were indirectly related to their composite scores, through academic achievement in high school.

The students face a lot of problems in developing positive study attitudes and study habits. Guidance is of the factor through which a student can improve his study attitudes and study habits and is directly proportional to academic achievement. The students who are properly guided by their parents have performed well in the exams. The guidance from the Factors Affecting Students' Academic Performance teacher also affects the student performance. The guidance from the parents and the teachers indirectly affect the performance of the students (Hussain, 2006).

H H3: There is a positive relationship between proper guidance and student performance.

Socio-economic factors like attendance in the class, family income, and mother's and father's education, teacher-student ratio, presence of trained teacher in school, sex of student and distance of school are also affected the performance of the students. (Raychauduri et al., 2010) Kernan, Bogart & Wheat (2011), academic success of graduate student will be enhanced if the optimal health related barriers are low. There is negative relationship between college credit and stress but weak relationship between GPA (Grade Point Average) and stress. (Zajacova, Lynch and Espenshade, 2005) Amitava Raychaudhuri, et. al., (July 2010), found that numerous studies have been done to identify those factors which are affecting student's academic performance. The students' academic performance depends on a number of socio-economic factors like students' attendance in the class, family income, mother's and father's education, teacher-student ratio, presence of trained teacher in school, sex of the student, and distance of schools.

Hijaz and Naqvi (2006) observed that there is a negative relationship between the family income and students' performance and they focus on the private colleges in Pakistan.

H4: There is a negative relationship between family stress and student performance.

Theoretical Framework VIII.

This section discusses the sample selection procedure, variables selection, the model used for the research and the statistical techniques.

The extent of existence for all variables in the research area was measured on a five-point likert scale ranging from, strongly disagree to Strongly Agree.

Ranging from 1 to 5 Strongly Disagree (1), Disagree (2), Neutral (3), Agree (4), Strongly Agree (5).

The source of data for this study is primary data acquired through questionnaire. 175 questionnaires were distributed.

Mean, Standard deviation, correlation and regression analysis are used through appropriate statistical package.

Findings of the study are discussed as under.

In order to meet the purpose of the study, this section has five parts for analyzing the data collected for the study. The There is a degree of association between communication and student performance i.e. 13 percent and also shows negative value and probability of error is also low.

There is degree of association between learning facilities; proper guidance and family stress with student performance are 13 percent, 20 percent and 2 percent respectively as shown in Table 6 On the basis of Beta coefficients the model shows that communication causes 20% positive variation in student performance and t -value is also significant. . So we accept H1 which states that "there is positive relationship between communication and student performance.

Learning facilities causes' 16% variation in student performance but the direction is positive direction. Here t-value is also significant. So we accept H2 which states that that "there is positive relationship between learning facilities and student performance Proper guidance causes 17% variation in student performance in positive direction and t -value is also significant. So we accept H3 which states that that "there is positive relationship between proper guidance and student performance Family stress causes 13% variation in student performance but in opposite direction or negative direction and t -value is insignificant. So we reject H4 which states that "there is negative relationship between family stress and student performance.

X.

This study was conducted to explore the important factors that affect the students' academic performance. Research was conducted on private colleges in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Four hypothesis used in the study to check the effect of independent variables on dependent variables. By using the appropriate statistical package it is found that communication, learning facilities, proper guidance and family stress are the factors that affect the student performance. Our three hypotheses are accepted and one hypothesis is rejected. Communication, learning facilities and proper guidance shows the positive impact on the student performance and the family stress shows the negative impact on the student performance but the significant level is high. So, it is indicated that the communication is more important factor that affect the student performance and the learning facilities and proper guidance are also affect the student performance. Family stress also affects the student performance and reduces the performance of the student and affects negatively the student performance.

There are certain limitations of this study. Firstly, the sample size taken in this study was very small that is only 155. If this study is being carried out again with large sample size the result might be improved than existing study.