How a minority of the minority succeed: a case study of twenty Hispanic achievers¹

Twenty highly successful Hispanic High School students were studied ethnographically for half of their junior year and all of their senior year. Ten were male, ten were female. All had come from low socio‐economic backgrounds with no role models of educational achievement in their immediate families. This study examines the key life events and cultural conditions that played a part in these students’ school careers. The identities and interpretative schemes of these students were analyzed, as were such routine activities as extensive cheating, time management strategies, and extracurricular involvements. A model of how a minority of the Hispanic minority achieve well in school is constructed to summarize the results.