This research intended to measure the overall emotional intelligence level based on the Bar on model in terms of intrapersonal, interpersonal, stress management, general mood and adaptability and compare the results for males and females. It also examined the relationship between emotional intelligence level and two cognitive abilities –decision making and stress management. For this very purpose, students of NUST, College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Rawalpindi, in the age limit 17 to 25 years were asked to fill out a questionnaire to measure emotional quotient (EQ). The results were validated from three activities: guessing the right emotion, word association and sentence completion self-assessments. We predicted that participants with higher EQ were more stress resistant and better decision formulators. Moreover, we also speculated that there was no significant effect of gender on EQ and the aforementioned capabilities based on prior literature review. However, our results were only partially verified; higher EQ did indeed increment decisiveness and the ability to tackle taxing scenarios, but gender did impact EQ, contradicting previous findings – males had a higher EQ than females and consequently were more resolute and composed under pressure.