Abstract:

Introduction
One of the most challenging times of students is residential life. Stay away from the family environment, along with the presence of unfamiliar people and acceptance of new rules in the social life of this period has become the impact of academic achievement. Students identify experiences in this field and knowledge of factors affecting academic status in this era of remarkable will be helpful for planning this important part of student life. The aim of study was determined the factors affected the academic achievement during the residential life in Alzahra University of Tehran, Iran.
Method
This study was a qualitative research which has been conducted by semi-structured interviews. The questions emphasis on factors that affected the academic achievement in during residential life. Participants were 14 residential students that were selected by purposive sampling until data saturation. Duration of interviews was between 20_40 minutes. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Completed data were analyzed through content analysis process.
Findings:
After data analyzing, were extracted 130 themes that in level two analyzing they reduced to 48 factors. Results show that most people, who were interviewed, emphasized on the changes of social life in residential period. They believed that Presence in a strange environment and being next to people with different cultures helped to growth and increased autonomy and be accepting, on the other hand it causes changes in people's values, beliefs and has been created cultural conflicts. Participants expressed that having a roommate with shared cultural is helpful for academic achievement and on the other hand, if there were a roommate with a different culture she has been causing people stress and academic failure.
Conclusion:
Results suggested that Presence in a dormitory helps to growth and increased autonomy but if the students couldn’t select their roommate, it may caused stress and academic failure. Therefore, results suggest to academic policy makers for attention to the students problems such as, to prepare possibility of selecting roommate in dormitories for students.

Keywords:

Academic Achievement, Residential life, Dormitory.