Private highs: Investigating university overmatch among students from elite schools

Jo Blanden (), Oliver Cassagneau-Francis, Lindsey Macmillan () and Gill Wyness ()
Additional contact information
Jo Blanden: Department of Economics, University of Surrey
Lindsey Macmillan: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities
Gill Wyness: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities

No 25-07, CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

Abstract: Inequality in college attendance is a key driver of intergenerational mobility. We examine the role of elite high-schools - specifically English private (fee-paying) schools - in shaping university destinations. Using linked-administrative data, we show the main advantage conferred by private schools is not access to elite universities for their best students, but access to middle-ranked courses for their lower ability students: low-achieving pupils from private schools enrol in university courses around 15 percentiles more selective than similarly qualified state-school students. Examining mechanisms, we show that this tendency to overmatch is driven largely by application behaviour.

Keywords: higher education; educational economics; college choice; mismatch; private schools (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I22 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2025-07, Revised 2026-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
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https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp25-07r1.pdf Revised version, 2026 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Private highs: investigating university overmatch among students from elite schools (2025)
Working Paper: Private Highs: Investigating University Overmatch Among Students from Elite Schools (2025)
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