Learning About Opportunity: Spillovers of Elite School Admissions in Peru

This paper studies how the admission of a student to an elite school changes the schooling outcomes of younger cohorts in the student’s origin school in Peru. Using a sharp regression discontinuity design, the analysis finds that the admission of an older schoolmate increases the probability that students in origin schools will apply and gain admission to the same elite school system. The effect is concentrated among students whose parents have low education levels, which indicates a process of information diffusion. Furthermore, there is a slightly positive effect on the learning achievement of potential applicants and no negative effect on the learning of students who are ineligible to apply. Overall, the findings show that selective schools can have effects that go beyond their own students and indicate that role models can be an effective mechanism for increasing the demand from high-achieving, low-income students for high-quality education.