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The role of soft skills at school is still debated, but they have emerged as important factors for students' academic achievement and life satisfaction. This study focuses on the combined influence of soft skills (in terms of adaptability, curiosity, leadership, initiative, perseverance, and social awareness), extracurricular activities, achievement emotions, self-regulated learning, motivation, and cognitive abilities on academic achievement and life satisfaction. A sample of 603 students (5th to 12th graders) participated in the study. The results of a Bayesian path analysis based on meta-analytical priors show that soft skills were (i) directly positively associated with students' achievement emotions, self-regulated learning, motivation, and life satisfaction and (ii) indirectly related with academic achievement through the mediation of self-regulated learning and motivation. On the other hand, only soft skills and achievement emotions were directly related to life satisfaction. Extracurricular activities showed a positive association with both soft skills and cognitive abilities. These results are the first to demonstrate the importance of soft skills and extracurricular activities when integrating all the above-mentioned factors in a model of students' academic achievement and life satisfaction.

Soft skills are important in several life domains, but their role in academic achievement has not been systematically investigated. This study examines how soft skills work together with self-regulated learning, motivation, and cognitive aspects in sustaining success at school. How extracurricular activities relates to these variables is examined too. A sample of 460 school students in years 5 to 12 was enrolled and examined on 6 personal soft skills (i.e. adaptability, personal initiative, perseverance, curiosity, leadership, and social awareness), cognitive abilities (i.e. reasoning, problem solving, mental rotation, working memory), motivation to learn, and self-regulated learning as predictors of their academic achievement. A measure of extracurricular activities was also included in the analysis. The results of a path model show that soft skills predicted self-regulated learning and motivation at school, and -- through the latter -- they indirectly fostered academic achievement over cognitive abilities. While cognitive abilities also predicted academic achievement and motivation, they were found unrelated to soft skills. Extracurricular activities influenced soft skills. Overall, these findings contribute to enlarging the theoretical framework on soft skills and their relationship with other variables involved in success at school.