This study investigated the extent to which autonomous motivation, effort and progress relating to current educational goals predict success in dealing with the challenging transition to university. Our study included two measurement points: (1) before the entrance examination, at which point participants (n = 280) documented ratings of their autonomous motivation, effort and progress regarding their educational goals; and (2) after receiving the results of the examination, at which time their success or failure of passing the entrance examination was checked by referring to the university archives. The results of the path model showed that when young adults pursued their educational goals for autonomous reasons, they invested special effort in their goal, and this led to a high level of goal progress. Goal progress, in turn, predicted their successfully passing the university's entrance examination.