Adjustment to university plays a vital role for student success in the academic programme and ultimately for completing the study. The major focus of this study was on exploring student engagement as a factor influencing student adjustment to university during the first year. This study aimed to explore the relationships between different forms of student engagement with different aspects of their adjustment or integration during the first year of study because the first year was identified as a critical period for student adjustment to university life. For that purpose, the predictive power of the student engagement model for the prediction of first-year student adjustment was examined, as well as the relationships of individual forms of student engagement with different measures of adjustment to university; academic and social adjustment, student goal commitment, and academic achievement. Drawing on both Tinto's Student Integration Model and models of student engagement this study aims to understand whether different types of active learning and interactions in the academic environment determine the quality of student adjustment to university. There has been much international research which established the relationship between student engagement in educationally purposeful activities with a number of educational outcomes. However, such research is sparse in Croatia. The theoretical part of the study provides a review of the literature on student adjustment and persistence as well as the review of theoretical models and research on student engagement. The emphasisis is placed on the widely accepted view of engagement as a multidimensional and dynamic process which encompasses behavior, cognitive processes, and emotions. In the theoretical parto f the dissertation, the research literature review was conducted and data for the empirical study were collected by using a questionnaire. The sample of this study included 637 first-year undergraduate students who attended the following higher education institutions; University of Zadar, Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb, The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture in Zagreb, the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, The Faculty of Science of the University of Zagreb and Faculty of engineering in Rijeka. T-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to determine the differences in the quality of student adjustment for subgroups with different demographic variables. Based on the findings of the study, the differences between groups regarding first-generation status have been partly confirmed in that the students with at least 197 one parent who is tertiary educated reported a higher level of academic adjustment. Also, results indicated a significant difference in the level of adjustment between groups with different place of permanent residence in favor of students from large cities who reported higher levels of overall adjustment, academic adjustment, and social adjustment than students from smaller areas. Further, students who had completed a gymnasium were found to have better academic achievement as compared to those who had completed a four-year vocational secondary school. The analysis of group differences based on student gender when analysed by total number of respondents revealed that female students made significantly better academic achievement, while differences with respect to gender in certain fields of science showed that male students in the field of social science and humanities had a lower goal commitment than female students in the same field of science. To identify the relationships between dependent variables and independent variables of the predictive model the correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were conducted. Based on the findings, this study has revealed direct positive effects of different forms of student engagement and academic self-efficacy on all measured determinants of student adjustment to university. From the pedagogical perspective, the concept of student engagement is closely related to the concept of student-centered education, and the study of this problem opens new opportunities for improving the existing and developing new ways to improve the quality of educational process in higher education.