The article presented the results of the study of the influence of emotional intelligence on the adaptation of first-year students in the educational environment of a technical university. The relevance of the study is that emotional intelligence, as one of the unique phenomena of modern psychological science, has not been sufficiently studied. Such problems as the manifestation of emotional intelligence in different categories of people; how much emotional intelligence is developed in young people, how objectively they realise it, how emotional intelligence affects students' relationships in the educational environment and students' academic achievements, etc., remain unexplored. The purpose of the article was to reveal the scientific and theoretical foundations of emotional intelligence, to identify the most established scientific views on the nature of the phenomenon in question, to determine how this property is developed in students of a technical university, what is its influence on the adaptation of first-year students at the university, how students can manage their emotional intelligence, who helps them with this, etc. An analysis of the current state of the scientific and theoretical foundations of emotional intelligence showed that the most established view is that of emotional intelligence as a manifestation of the internal emotional attitude of the individual, accompanied by intellectual awareness of social behaviour, attitudes toward different types of activities and interactions in the environment. The article, based on modern research methods – tests of Hall and “Emin” (D. Lyusin), as well as on the results of a special ascertaining experiment, revealed the ways in which emotional intelligence influences students' academic achievements, the adaptation of pre-university students in the educational environment, the development of self-motivation, empathy in students, the recognition of other people's emotional attitudes, and the management of their emotional intelligence, which are a consequence of the purposeful supportive pedagogical activities of teachers. The practical significance of the research results lies in the fact that they can be used in the development of various adaptation programs for students, including those aimed at developing emotional intelligence as a psychological factor that ensures effective sociopsychological adaptation to the educational environment of a higher educational institution