Educational policy usually overlooks Cambodian American students as a unique ethnic group, attending instead to the positive statistics that aggregate Asian American students into a single group of successful students. Reflecting the reality of underachievement in this population, much of the existing research on Cambodian Americans has focused on their academic difficulties, high dropout rates, delinquency, and language barriers. The extant literature examining the relationship between traditional cultural values and academic success for Cambodian American students have yielded conflicting results. Through a Multiple Worlds lens, the present study explored how successful Cambodian American college students perceive traditional cultural values in relation to their past and present school experiences. In addition, this research investigated that support successful transition between Cambodian American students' incongruent family, school and peer cultures. Findings demonstrate that successful Cambodian American students regularly face a number of borders in moving through the different contexts of their daily lives. Family obligation emerged as a significant traditional value that acted as a paradoxical influence in these students' academic lives. Our data suggests that students' supportive school environments in high school and in college were significant for helping them resolve this contradiction and pursue academic success. Implications for practice are discussed. (Contains 3 footnotes.)