Entrance examinations are used for admission for psychology students for some studies of psychology in Croatia. The most commonly used tests for entrance exams are different tests of cognitive ability. The aim of this study is to examine the traits of a successful psychology student and find out which of the predictors (demographic data, results in current education, cognitive ablities, measure of emotional intelligence and personality traits) affect the criteria of a successful student as well as to open the question of revising the entrance exams for psychology studies. The study consisted of three parts. The first part had 114 participants, psychology students from the Department of Psychology, University of Rijeka, from the second year of undergraduate study to the second year of graduate studies. It examined their understanding of emotions, personality traits and various demographic information. The second part was generating a list of characteristics of successful students by 17 professors of the same Department. The third part of the study consisted of an evaluation of all the students who participated in the first part of the research by that same list consisting of the most frequently named characteristics. The results showed that there were two factors that make up the traits of a successful student (responsible and conscientous task performance – showing interest and integration of content). Significant predictors for showing interest and integration of content were measure of emotional intelligence and age, for responsible and conscientous taks performance measure of emotional intelligence and previous academic results. Significant predictors for current academic results (freshman year GPA results) were also measure of emotional intelligence and previous academic results.