This study explored how motivational and achievement factors interact and affect persistence in minority undergraduate engineering students. Study participants were 38 entering Mexican and African American college students in an engineering program at a large, southwestern university in the Fall of 1990. Each student was assigned to a peer counseling group designed to solicit information on how students negotiated their way through the engineering program. In the course of the study, which lasted three semesters, students completed questionnaires and were interviewed by telephone. Analysis of the students' perceptions of their experiences showed that successful students more frequently described specific learning strategies they used and offered more details about what they would do and why. In addition, low achievers referred to poor teaching in response to factors which hindered their achievement though close to half of the successful students also mentioned poor teaching. As a group the students generally sounded alienated, discouraged and/or overwhelmed by the program's difficulty, how hard they had to work to keep up, and how difficult it was to obtain good grades. Comments that characterized the system as hostile were as frequent among the successful students as among unsuccessful students. Appendixes contain study instruments. (Contains 33 references.) (JB)