Ainoa Aparicio Fenoll (Collegio Carlo Alberto)

“The Best in the Class”

Abstract: I propose a novel methodology to identify how being the best in the class at the beginning of one’s school life shapes future academic performance. My methodology exploits that some students are the best in the class because better students in their school were assigned to other classes and the random component of this allocation is a well-known function of students ranking in the school and the number of classes. I find a negative impact of being the best in the class on future performance: being the best in second grade reduces test scores by 0.27 standard deviations in fifth grade while being the best in fifth grade reduces test scores by 0.46 standard deviations in eighth grade.