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Effects of High-Achieving Peers: Findings from a National High School Assignment System

Ahmet Alkan & Sinan Sarpça

Journal of Human Capital2025https://doi.org/10.1086/735102article
AJG 3ABDC A
Weight
0.50

Abstract

Recent studies of elite exam schools in the United States have yielded the startling conclusion that such schools improve neither educational achievement nor longer-term educational outcomes. Is the same true for exam schools elsewhere? The education system in Turkey is ideal for investigating this question. There, students are placed in exam schools on the basis of a high-stakes national examination. By use of an exceptional database for Turkey not heretofore available, we conduct regression discontinuity analysis exploiting score discontinuities between more than 200 exam schools. We find that attending more selective exam schools yields large achievement gains and improved university placements for high-achieving students.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/735102

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@article{ahmet2025,
  title        = {{Effects of High-Achieving Peers: Findings from a National High School Assignment System}},
  author       = {Ahmet Alkan & Sinan Sarpça},
  journal      = {Journal of Human Capital},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/735102},
}

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.