This study aimed at assessing the cognitive determinants of the BSIT students during the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020. A total of three hundred ninety-four (394) respondents participated in this study to understand the relationship of the cognitive determinants to their academic performance in a major programming course. Results revealed that the number of male students was more significant than the number of female students, there was a small gap between the number of students who graduated from public and private secondary academic institutions, and technical-vocational strand and academic strand were the two senior high school strand that the IT students had taken. In terms of the cognitive determinants, academic competence were very evident to the students with mean ratings of 3.826. However, test competence, time management and strategic study habits need to be improved based on the mean ratings of 3.208, 3.115 and 3.414, respectively. In assessing the relationship between the variables, the academic performance has a significant relationship with cognitive determinants (r = 0.443, p < 0.05). This study suggests that teachers must incessantly create more meaningful learning experiences to continuously improve academic performance and explore new ways to improve the teaching and learning process.