When students enrol in higher education they have different motives to do so and as a result their achievement motivation vary. The purpose of this paper is to review the field of student motivation in Higher Education and to investigate the different study strategies students adopt in order to reach their study goals and obtain high achievement. Furthermore, it is important to study how these factors are related to the Higher Educational context. Student attrition- and student retention patterns are changing, due to harmonization of educational systems in Europe, the widening participation in Higher Education, the contextual and life long learning paradigm and the increasing demands for students' employability after graduation. In the previous ECER conferences, data from a longitudinal study have been presented, where four cohorts of students are expressing their expectations and experiences of being students in a graduate engineering program in Linkoping University, Sweden. Our results show that there are differences both within cohorts and between cohorts on the above mentioned issues. We therefore find it necessary to investigate a number of questions in reviewing other studies related to student motivation, study strategies and achievements related to the study context. Among these questions, the following can be mentioned. What kind of motivational terms are common in research on students in higher education? How do researchers look at the different motivational theories and what consequences are the students' motives believed to have for their study strategies and academic achievement? How is the educational context described in the studies? What part do the teachers play for the students' motivation? Is motivation mainly related to the achievement and the academic grades, or is it discussed in more general terms such as social competence and social development? What kind of measuring instruments are used in order to assess study motivation and study strategies? Can the instruments be used in different educational contexts? This research review of longitudinal studies and the current findings in the area will serve as a basis for a study within the framework of that longitudinal study and will eventually be subject to a doctoral thesis. In longitudinal studies, the same student groups are examined during several years, which make it possible to compare variations, which occur over time. It is possible to investigate the students' motivation to study, their study strategies (for example if they study in study groups or alone, and how they cope with stress and extreme workloads), and their academic achievement (in terms of passed exams and obtained grades) related to their study context. This may further help us to understand the students' study patterns, why certain educational programs are more popular than others, why some students drop out and why others excel academically in Higher Education.