A cluster of social psychological variables--academic motivation, self-concept, and significant others influence--as they intervene between other independent variables and the child's status projections, were examined in this study. Data came from an extensive questionnaire survey, conducted in 1969, of 1,412 lower social strata mother-child pairs. Residential-racial subgroupings surveyed were (1) rural Appalachian white students and their mothers from Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina; (2) rural Black students and their mothers from Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina; and (3) urban Black students and their mothers from Alabama, Kentucky, and Virginia. It was concluded that occupational and educational status projections appeared to have different paths of influence and that occupational status projections tended to be relatively independent of criteria determining life chances while educational projections were considerably more influenced by socioeconomic, ability, and self-evaluative factors. Implications of the study were that any attempt to treat occupational and educational status projections together as part of any constellation concept such as ambition can be questioned and that the more definitive antecedents of the child's educational status projection, coupled with greater explained variance and more anticipatory deflection in educational expectations, possibly indicate less idealism in educational projections than in occupational projections. (HBC)