The present study investigates the effect of pre-service teachers’ cognitive abilities and personality traits on graduation and teacher self-efficacy using data from the German National Education Panel Study (N = 5 520). Applying latent profile analysis, we found four different profiles of pre-service teachers based on high school grade point average, reading and maths achievement as well as the Big Five. Our results show that the profile with low cognitive abilities and low extraversion is negatively associated with graduation and teacher self-efficacy. Conversely, high cognitive abilities in combination with high extraversion are positively related to both aspects of university success. The findings provide novel evidence on the identification of at-risk students in teacher education and have implications on the selection of teacher candidates as well as targeted support offers.