Social skills have been studied in the university context due to its importance in interpersonal relationships and demands of academic's life adaptation. This study aimed to analyze the results of empirical studies about the assessment of social skills among college students, verifying instruments used, recurrent themes and results achieved. It was included articles indexed on PubMed, PsycINFO, BVS-PSI, SciELO and LILACS. Initially, 235 articles were found and, after exclusions, 29 articles were selected for the final analysis. Results showed a positive association between a good repertoire of social skills and assertiveness, sense of self-efficacy, satisfactory social interactions and academic adaptation; but not between social skills and intellectual reasoning abilities, type of course or university. Future empirical studies should consider including multimodal assessment methods, in order to help promoting guidelines for the development of protocols for social skills training. This study can contribute to advances in research in the educational area, as the school environment from preschool to college is a relevant context for the development of social skills.