This study examines the ambitions for higher education of women who grew up in working-class families in Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota between 1950 and 1985. Most historical studies of the recent past have ignored the experiences of working-class women and considered them to be marginal to important changes in women's lives generally. This study argues that as early as the 1960s working-class college-bound women were developing an important critique of patriarchal relationships within and outside their families, and that their ambitions for college were significant to the larger culture as they shaped new prospects for women's independence. The article analyzes oral history narratives alongside other social and cultural data, linking women's stories of upward mobility to broader historical patterns in the economy, popular culture, and working-class communities during these turbulent decades. It points to the pivotal role of class backgrounds and shifting gender identities in white women's construction of “success stories” in an era of growing access to higher education.