Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College

Benjamin Elsner (), Ingo E. Isphording and Ulf Zölitz

No 202110, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: This paper studies how a student’s ordinal rank in a peer group affects performance and specialisation choices in university. By exploiting data with repeated random assignment of students to teaching sections, we find that a higher rank increases performance and the probability of choosing related follow-up courses and majors. We document two types of dynamic effects. First, earlier ranks are less important than later ranks. Second, responses to rank changes are asymmetric: improvements in rank raise performance, while decreases in rank have no effect. Rank effects partially operate through students’ expectations about future grades.

Keywords: Rank; Social comparisons; Higher education; Peer effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2021-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/12224 First version, 2021 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement rank affects performance and major choices in college (2018)
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:ucn:wpaper:202110

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicolas Clifton ().