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Self-referent performance beliefs can influence people’s decision making related to long-term goals. Current measures of such beliefs, however, do not explicitly focus on the long-term aspects of goal achievement. We introduce a new concept, Long-Term Prospects (LTP), which is defined as the self-perception that one can maintain the continuous effort needed to achieve long-term goals. We developed a measure of LTP and demonstrated across three studies (n > 1,900) that college students’ LTP predicted their academic performance, as defined by self-reported grade point average (GPA) and official GPA. Moreover, LTP predicted GPA better than commonly used measures of grit, conscientiousness, and academic self-concept. Multiple regression and Bayesian results showed that LTP accounted for unique variance in the prediction of college GPA above and beyond intelligence, prior achievement, and …