Abstract
Changes and advances in areas such as communication, technology, transportation, and education have provided many opportunities for people from different cultures to live together in the same place. There are many organizational and individual strategies that are used differently to manage such intercultural interactions and differences. A new concept at the top of these strategies is cultural intelligence. This is because people with high levels of cultural intelligence can adapt quickly to the systems and social life of the country they visit, which also creates significant advantages in achieving academic success (being excellent in school, exemplary). In this context, adaptation processes and levels of achievement affect individuals to a certain extent. For this reason, this study provides an opportunity to analyze whether cultural intelligence and cultural adaptation have an impact on academic performance. Therefore, this research aims to determine the relationship between cultural intelligence and cultural adaptation and their impact on academic performance. For this reason, the sample group of the study consisted only of foreign students studying at the Khoja Ahmet Yasawi International Kazakh-Turkish University. The study surveyed a total of 275 international students, with 253 providing complete and correct responses. The results showed that participants' cultural intelligence levels were higher than their cultural adaptation levels, and that higher levels of cultural intelligence were associated with higher academic performance.