This qualitative study examines the educational experiences of six eighth-grade, female, Mexican-American students in an urban public middle school in an effort to discover which personality characteristics, experiences, or external factors contributed to their academic success. Through a series of semi-formal interviews, the participants described their perceptions of their academic success in the context of their lives. Parent and family factors, motivation/self-efficacy/resiliency, academic achievement, social class and social capital factors were explored with each student. Triangulation was carried out with the use of semi-formal interviews with the participant’s teachers and an examination of the participants’ academic cumulative files. The findings illustrate that no single personality characteristic, experience, or external factor in a student’s life promotes success, but rather it was a combination of these characteristics, experiences, and factors that facilitated the students’ success.