The purpose of this paper is to examine how social environment affects women’s STEM choices as early as high school. Using administrative data from China, we find that exposure to high-performing female peers in mathematics increases the likelihood that women choose a science track during high school, while exposure to more high-performing males decrease this likelihood. We also find that peer quality has persistent effects on college outcomes. Overall, there is little evidence of peer effects for boys. Our results suggest that girls doing well in mathematics provide an affirmation effect that encourages female classmates to pursue a STEM track.

This paper studies the labor market returns to higher-education quality for low-skilled students. Using a regression discontinuity design, we compare students who marginally pass and marginally fail the French high school exit exam on the first attempt. Threshold crossing leads to an improvement in quality but has no effect on quantity of higher education pursued. Specifically, students who marginally pass are more likely to enroll in STEM majors and postsecondary institutions with better peers. Marginally passing also increases earnings by 12.5% at the ages of 27–29.

,

Despite strong demand for attending high schools with better peers, there is mixed evidence on whether doing so improves academic outcomes. We estimate the cognitive returns to high school quality by comparing the college entrance exam scores of students in China who were barely above and below high school admission thresholds. Results indicate that while peer quality improves significantly across all sets of admission cutoffs, the only increase in performance occurs from attending tier 1 high schools. Further evidence suggests the returns to high school quality are driven by teacher quality rather than peer quality or class size.