Career adaptability is a factor that determines the success of undergraduate students from the provinces of Papua and West Papua in completing their education. Therefore, this research aims to assess the influence of perceived social support from parents, friends, and lecturers on career adaptability as mediated by core self-evaluation in undergraduate students from the provinces of Papua and West Papua. The research respondents were 176 undergraduate students (female = 104; male = 72) from the provinces of Papua and West Papua who attended either public or private universities in various regions in Indonesia. The research instruments used include three types of scales, namely, Social Provision Scale, Core Self-Evaluation Scale, and Career Adapt-abilities Scale, which are distributed within the network (online). The Hayes’ macro-PROCESS was used for handling data processing. The test results show that core self-evaluation partially mediates the influence of perceived social support from parents (ab = 0.110, p < 0.05), friends (ab = 0.114, p < 0.05), and lecturers (ab = 0.139, p < 0.05) on the career adaptability of undergraduate students from the provinces of Papua and West Papua. The implications, limitations, and suggestions for the research will be discussed. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.