Persistent Effects of Early Academic Rank on Cognitive and Noncognitive Outcomes

Eunsik Chang (), Padilla-Romo, María () and Cecilia Peluffo ()
Additional contact information
Eunsik Chang: Mississippi State University
Padilla-Romo, María: University of Tennessee
Cecilia Peluffo: University of Florida

No 18683, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: This paper estimates the effects of early academic rank in elementary school on later cognitive and noncognitive outcomes in the context of Mexico. We use linked administrative records to compare students with similar third-grade achievement but different ordinal positions. These rank differences arise from idiosyncratic variation in the achievement distributions of elementary-school cohorts. We find that a higher third-grade rank increases performance on a high-stakes high school admission exam. Both broader school-cohort rank and classroom rank contribute to this achievement gain when estimated jointly. Higher rank leads to more selective high school choices and improves self-reported measures of self-perception, academic aspirations, classroom responsibility, learning strategies, and teamwork attitudes by the end of ninth grade. We also provide evidence that higher elementary school rank improves students' high school placement outcomes.

Keywords: school-cohort rank; classroom rank; high-stakes test scores; noncognitive skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I25 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18683.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18683

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().