Academic risk-taking denotes the individual tendency to choose demanding rather than easy learning tasks that entail the risk of making a visible error and ultimately appearing less competent in front of others. Academic risk-taking has been shown to be beneficial for learning outcomes, but students’ reluctance is oftentimes high. The purpose of our study is to investigate whether motivation to study and locus of control are linked to students’ propensity to engage in academic risk-taking. We computed Pearson correlations, latent variable models, and multiple linear regressions to analyze a sample of N = 245 German university students. Our results indicate that intrinsic motivation to study and internal locus of control are moderately correlated with academic risk-taking at the group dimension, and in parts with academic risk-taking at the peer dimension. Extrinsic motivation and external locus of control do not show any clear associations with academic risk-taking. These findings indicate that internal locus of control and intrinsic motivation play an important role in the tertiary education classroom for supporting students to achieve their academic goals.