Access to high quality curriculum through acceleration/college preparatory programs is essential to student success in their post-secondary education and opportunities. However, African-American and Hispanic minority students are disproportionately underrepresented in these programs. These lower rates of participation have the potential to impact that post-secondary outcomes. This exploratory study seeks to understand, from the perspective of students, how they make decisions to participate in one such program, the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. In this study, two student focus groups of six participants each were chosen using a purposive convenience sampling. These focus groups consisted of students who applied for participation and were accepted to the program and students who declined to apply for the program. A total of six individual parent interviews, three parents representing each focus group, were employed to provide additional data and background to better understand data collected during student interviews. The findings from these interviews informed the findings. The findings reveal that there were four primary themes by which students and families based their decision making. These themes included workload and stress, social relationships, family influence, and access to information. These factors worked in concert to frame student and parent beliefs regarding the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. While students and families in both groups saw the same factors as important, they came to differing conclusions regarding enrollment based on the social and cultural contexts of the students. The social and cultural contexts of students and parents strongly influences the way in which they process this information. Understanding the influences of this context is essential to increasing minority student enrollment in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]