This paper reviews the literature to clarify the image of a student with a high level of well-being (WB) for a future systematic literature review and evidence-based interventions to promote student WB. It presents a holistic approach to the analysis of definitions, operationalisation and indicators with interpretative phenomenological analyses (IPA). The main question of the paper is what image of student WB can be constructed from the components and indicators of WB that have been highlighted in the literature. Overall, 50 publications were coded before the subjectively evaluated saturation was reached and 641 mentions of the different components of WB were coded that were distributed among seven categories: 'individual psychological indicators' (319 units), 'social contacts, relationships' (136 units), 'health' (78 units), 'school life' (63 units), 'standard of living' (26 units), 'spirituality, moral competence, values' (12 units) and 'general mentions' of WB (7 units). It is argued that individual psychological state, quality of relationships, health, school-related features, objective indicators, and moral and spiritual aspects are features of students with a high level of WB. The implications for further research, practical usage and the limitations of the study are offered in the Discussion section.