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Description: Cognitive ability and curiosity are significant predictors of academic achievement, yet the pro-cesses underlying these relations are not well understood. I drew on ideas from the environ-mental enrichment hypothesis and the differential preservation hypothesis and hypothesized that epistemic behavior act as a mediator. Longitudinal data were collected from 1,964 individuals in three waves, spanning five years: Cognitive ability and curiosity were assessed at Time 1; ep-istemic behavior at Time 2; at Time 3, grade point average and highest degree of both secondary and tertiary academic education (if applicable) were obtained retrospectively via self-report. I found expected bivariate relations between all study variables, including a significant relation between cognitive ability and curiosity and significant relations of both of these variables with secondary academic performance. Epistemic behavior was related to curiosity and academic performance but, at odds with the hypothesis, did not mediate the relation between cognitive and personality variables and academic performance. It is concluded that the process underlying the behavioral consequences of cognitive ability and curiosity is not environmental enrichment. This OSF project contains the preregistration, the data and the script. Information on the mesures used are available on https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7W9YJ