The future of Mexican Americans in higher academic achievement is crucial toward this group's socio-economic mobility. U.S. Bureau of the Census indicates that Mexican Americans are a vast and increasingly expanding population. Relative to their growth in numbers, there is a disproportionate amount of young Mexican Americans not attending the realms of higher education. One-hundred and eight Mexican American university students were sampled from three major state universities in southern California. Self-efficacy theory, goal setting theory, acculturation, and level of total family income were predicted to correlate with academic achievement measured by cumulative grade point average in college. Results from bivariate correlations and multiple regression indicated that Course Efficacy, a subfactor of College Self-Efficacy was a significant predictor of grade point average. However, this result was only found significant among females in the sample. Furthermore, ancillary analyses using additional bivariate correlations indicated gender specific significant relationships between Cultural Incorporation scores and grade point average for females and Social Efficacy and grade point average for males. Additionally, a factor analysis was performed on the Academic Goal Setting Scale which yielded a two-factor structure of goal setting behavior among the college students in this sample. Recommendations and areas for future research are also indicated.