This paper offers a qualitative analysis of decisions of 64 community-college students in seeking a transfer in Hong Kong. In weighing a number of educational options and then offers, with a similar level of desirability in some cases, in order to achieve their transfers, advantaged-class and disadvantaged-class respondents struggled with different logics of reasoning and negotiated anxiously with their changing structural realities. This qualitative analysis addresses the contextual, processual and emotional aspects of their decision making and provides a more convincing illustration of how the secondary effect of social stratification operates against a changing landscape of higher education.