Vol.:(0123456789) Social Psychology of Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-019-09497-3 1 3 Predictors of academic success in the entry and integration stages of students’ academic careers Andri Burger 1  · Luzelle Naudé 1 Received: 21 August 2018 / Accepted: 22 April 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the predictors of academic success of South African students. The study focused on 164 frst to fourth year students. The extent to which students’ grade 12 performance, the type of high school they attended and their academic self-concepts contributed to their academic success during the entry and integration stages of students’ academic careers were examined. The combina- tion of the three variables predicted a signifcant amount of the variance in the aca- demic success of students in both the entry and integration stages of their academic careers. While all three variables made a unique and signifcant individual contri- bution in the entry stage, only grade 12 performance and academic self-concept explained a signifcant amount of the variance in the academic success of the stu- dents in the integration stage. Academic self-concept explained the largest amount of variance in academic success for both groups. Keywords Predictors of academic success · Grade 12 performance · Type of high school · Academic self-concept · Entry and integration stages of students’ academic careers 1 Introduction Academic success is a contentious issue globally and has been researched exten- sively. However, despite the high interest from various sectors in the academic suc- cess of students in higher education (HE) and the multiple defnitions and conceptu- alisations of the construct, there is still no clarity regarding the predictors of student success. Furthermore, in South Africa (SA), the issue of student success, persis- tence, and the completion of students’ qualifcations has risen to the forefront of the national dialogue on HE (Young 2016). Since the 1960s, several studies have been * Luzelle Naudé naudel@ufs.ac.za 1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of the Humanities, University of the Free State, P.O. Box 339, 9301 Bloemfontein, South Africa