The paper presents the findings of a theoretical analysis of the correlation between a person’s adaptation and his/her social competence. It presents the results of an empirical study of the correlation between social competence and adaptive potential that was conducted on a sample of students (N = 80, aged 18–19) using the following diagnostic tools: the «Communicative social competence instrument» (CSC) (N. P. Fetiskin, V. V. Kozlov, T. M. Manuilov) and the «Social and psychological adaptation questionnaire» (K. Rogers and R. Diamond).