Background: Metacognition is a self-monetary method that helps nursing students to discover strategies to learn and memorize. This capability enables students to improve types of goals that they adopt for learning, either mastery or performance, which in turn improves their academic motivation. This study aimed to examine nursing students' metacognitive thinking and goal orientation as predictors of academic motivation at Faculty of Nursing, Zagazig University, Egypt. A descriptive correlational design was used for this study. Subjects and methods: A stratified random sample of 325 nursing students were chosen from the above mentioned setting. For this study; three tools were used to collect the data: Metacognitive awareness inventory, goal inventory, and academic motivation inventory. Results clarified that the highest percentages of nursing students (71.7%, 90.8%, & 90.8%) had high levels of metacognitive thinking, goal orientation, and academic motivation, respectively. Additionally, there were significant and positive correlations between nursing students' metacognitive thinking, goal orientation, and academic motivation, where P-value < 0.05. Conclusion: Nursing students' metacognitive thinking and goal orientation were significant predictors of academic motivation. Recommendation: The faculty administrators should increase students' and nurse educators' awareness of goal orientation and metacognitive thinking to create a desired teaching and learning environment.