This paper examines the impact of educational aspirations on academic achievement among students from immigrant backgrounds compared to their native peers. Using data from the Korea Multicultural Education Survey 2017, the academic achievement of 1,450 school children in Seoul and Gyeonggi was analyzed. The result showed a positive association between educational aspirations and academic achievement, supporting the popular ‘meritocratic’ notion of student success. However, this positive association was much weaker for students of immigrant backgrounds, in comparison to their native peers. This pattern was indicative of the uneven ‘opportunity structure’ in which immigrant-background students encounter less opportunities to translate aspirations into achievement. Overall, the findings of the present study suggest that micro-level interventions for immigrant-background minority students need to be complemented by macro-level efforts to reduce systemic exclusions in the educational ecology.