Introduction: The main objective of this paper is to establish a profile of socio-emotional competencies characteristic of a sample of students from each of the big academic areas in higher education: legal sciences, social sciences, education, humanities, science and technology, and health. An additional objective was to analyse differences between these fields. Method: The study was carried out on a large sample (N=608) of university students from 14 different programs at the University of Alicante (Spain). Assessment was taken using different measures of emotional intelligence, such as TMMS and EQ-i. Results: Results of the one-way analysis of variance among the different scientific fields revealed that significant differences appear in practically all aspects of Emotional Intelligence, except for the stress management variable. Discussion: Based on these results, implications are drawn for developing generic socio-emotional competencies in the framework of the European Space for Higher Education. (Contains 4 tables.)