Why are talented pupils who come from low-status families reluctant to choose knowledge-intensive educational routes? Throughout this paper we try to answer this question, employing the framework of sociological rational choice theory. Our argumentation is that (1) the perception of one's own...

High school track choice determines college access in many countries. We hypothesize that some qualified students avoid the college-bound track simply because they overestimate admission requirements. To test this hypothesis, we designed a randomized field experiment that communicated the...

This study examines friendship and hostility relations between Roma students and the ethnically homogeneous non-Roma majority in Hungarian schools. Using data on friendship and hostility relations of 15-year-old students from 82 schools the study focuses on the interaction between exposure to...

This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified and selective Hungarian educational system and makes two contributions to the literature. First, it tests both peer-contrasting and peer-conforming influences by considering peers' GPA and endogenous...

Social theories posit that peers affect students' academic self-concept (ASC). Most prominently, Big-Fish-Little-Pond, invidious comparison, and relative deprivation theories predict that exposure to academically stronger peers decreases students' ASC, and exposure to academically weaker peers...

This study is about the role of personality in professional (business) higher education. According to literature of personality vs. education and personality vs. career, some people have better academic performance, while others' performance is better at work. Present study observes this...