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The Community College Student Experiences Questionnaire, a recently developed self-report instrument, contains measures for both student involvement, manifested as quality of effort in various college experiences, and gains toward educational goals making it possible for 2-year institutions to easily investigate the relationships between the two variables. The present study used data originating from this instrument to examine the comparative differences in the quality of students' efforts in various college experiences and in the perceptions of career preparation gains of students from four groups of vocational programs: business, health, technical/communications, and trade/industry. The differential effects of these efforts on gains in career preparation, controlling for student background and student status measures, were also examined. Results indicated that the vocational groups differed in the amount of effort students exerted in a particular college experience and in perceived gains in career preparation. The students in the health group exerted the greater quality of effort in all of the college experiences and perceived the greatest gains in career preparation. Regression analyses indicated that the influences of student characteristics and quality of effort measures on student perceptions of career preparation gains also differed for the four groups. These results imply that, in developing and explaining career gains, vocational students from diverse programs should not necessarily be viewed as a single homogeneous group.