Unfortunately, your answer is going to be "It Depends". Lots of factors play into this.
Care to elaborate on what I can do to up my acceptance rate if I feel i've already maxed my hash rate?
That depends on your pool luck and the pool hashrate. Also depends whether you calculate on the wrong block while it gets solved elsewhere, then your client sees the block has been solved on the pool and it must move to the next block.
That's why it's essentially "mining" as with gold. You can have the gold scooped up from your hands by somebody with a more powerful machine. To up your acceptance rate, you can up your hashrate, but honestly just depends on pool luck.
