Students of color are consistently underrepresented in honors and gifted programs nationwide, and even high-achieving students share many of the risk factors with their low-achieving peers. The study presented in this paper employed mixed methods to investigate the relationship between the design of a rigorous college preparatory program, the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IB), and the socioeconomic status of the students the program serves. The paper begins with a brief overview of the literature that documents the academic achievement gap among high-achieving Latino and African American students, as well as the literature on intervention programs designed to ameliorate these gaps. Following a description of the methodology, it presents the recruitment and admission practices employed by the program studied. The paper concludes with a description of the academic and social scaffolds developed and implemented by local IB teachers that directly support students' academic achievement. The study found that an open admission International Baccalaureate program was successfully attracting and retaining African American, Latino, and Native American students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Findings are attributed to IB teachers' deeply held belief in the ability of the students to meet the rigor of the program. Implementing a rigorous academic curriculum was only the first step in the process of raising the academic achievement of Latino and African American students. This IB program also has instituted academic and social support mechanisms to keep students motivated to pursue the challenging curriculum. (Contains 7 tables and 2 endnotes.)