Peer Influence in College Applications
This paper studies how exposure to peers affects college application behavior. We use neighbors who attend different high schools to mitigate concerns about common shocks. Using granular classroom-level data, we find that exposure to peers who have applied to a program increases application rates. Consistent with an information mechanism, there is no additional effect of peers who are admitted. In counterfactuals, the effect is large enough to close urban-rural gaps and gender gaps in applications to selective college programs. We make the (generally NP-hard) application portfolio choice problem tractable using a setting where admission probabilities are observable and conditionally independent.
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Copy CitationAna M. Gazmuri and Elena Prager, "Peer Influence in College Applications," NBER Working Paper 35993 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35993.Download Citation
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