This study has been conducted to show that there is a recent trend in engineering colleges in India that students who are considered to be highly intelligent show poor academic performance during their 1st year. This article is proposed to examine the role of motivation factors such as teaching methods and learning material in the academic performance of engineering and technological students in India. A test was carried out among engineering students. A total of 200 male and female students participated in this test. A 2-group discriminator analysis was done to analyse the data. The results showed that there was a significant correlation (p = 0.000) between motivation factors and academic performance of engineering students. The higher the rating of these factors by the students, the higher their performance. (Contains 12 tables.)