Student success is an ongoing area of interest to educators and researchers alike. The current study seeks to expand the literature on what factors help or hinder students by examining the roles of Need for Cognition (NfC), academic motivation, and student study habits in academic success. The results indicated that NfC scores, Personal Responsibility, and Bad Study Habits are predictors of student success as measured by grade point average (GPA). In addition, students with high scores on the NfC scale had higher GPAs than did students with lower scores. Students who had lower scores on Bad Study Habits tended to do better than students with higher scores. Overall, the results indicate that both innate and external factors are important for success and can be used as guides to craft interventions for struggling students.