Using data from in-depth individual interviews, this article discusses the educational experiences and ambitions of two young working-class full-time female students. The two studies are derived from a wider investigation into student post-16 educational experiences and decision-making, based on a sample of students and staff of an Advanced Vocational Certificate of Education in Travel and Tourism at a large further and higher education college in the West Midlands of England. The author considers the young women's stories in the light of governmental aims to widen participation in the post-16 sector. It is argued that, although the students' stories offer a positive account of determination and ambition, they also reveal ambivalences and struggles that reflect the nature of the barriers that working-class students can encounter within post-16 education. Such ambivalences and struggles reflect, in turn, the wider contradictions that the post-compulsory sector faces within the "market state".