This paper presents results from a longitudinal study of sojourner students which was conducted at an international university in Germany from 2004 to 2007. The study followed one cohort of undergraduate students from the first week of their studies to graduation from their Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree. Participants completed three questionnaires at the beginning of each year: the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) (Schwartz et al. 2001), the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) (Biggs 1987), and the Student Background Questionnaire (Matthews, Lietz & Darmawan 2007). Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to examine how personal values influenced students’ learning approaches (achieving, deep, or surface) and how these, in turn, impacted upon students’ academic achievement. Furthermore, it was examined how robust these relationships were once gender and discipline area (i.e. Social Sciences or Natural Sciences) were included in the models and whether or not they changed over time. First, results showed differences in term of which personal values were related to the three learning approaches and a certain consistency of these relationships at the beginning, the middle and the end of students’ undergraduate studies. Second, whereas the deep and achieving learning approaches resulted in higher achievement students who displayed more characteristics of the surface learning approach showed lower achievement. Finally, analyses using data from all three occasions showed that while some differences emerged as regards the specific personal values related to the different learning approaches, the positive impact of the achieving and the deep approach on achievement, the higher performance of female students and the predominant absence of effects of academic discipline on learning approaches or achievement were the same over the three-year period.