Purpose: Students' performance in academic settings, to a great extent, is an outcome of personal determinants of individuals. So, it becomes necessary to understand the role of personality traits in gaining desired academic outcomes. This investigation attempts to study some selected personality traits' contribution to students' self-efficacy and disaffection and the further impact of these two variables on academic performance. Design/methodology/approach: To attain the target of the study, a sample of 455 university students from state-owned universities of Haryana, India, has been drawn based on the snowball sampling technique. The researcher used Google Forms to collect primary data. The structure equation modeling technique has been applied to analyze the relation between studied variables. Findings: Findings of the study showed a significant positive association of personality traits named agreeableness, conscientiousness and extraversion with self-efficacy that further contributes to academic performance. Also, students' agreeableness and conscientiousness were negatively associated with students' disaffection, discouraging an individual's academic performance. Extraversion did not show any significant association with students' disaffection. Originality/value: Studies are available exploring variables like personality traits, student disaffection and self-efficacy. This study attempts to study all these variables together to understand their impact on academic performance.