Nicholas Mark, Jennifer Jennings, and I posted a new working paper at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform on peer similarity in high school choices in NYC. This project originated as an exploratory study in which we aimed to use high school applications data to identify groups of peers who share specific school choices in NYC’s expansive high school choice system. Commonality in choices could also be indicative of middle school counselors giving specific recommendations on where to apply and how to rank schools. (See our mixed methods study in Sociology of Education on the role of guidance counselors in school choice). To our surprise, similarity in high school applications was very low. Our new paper provides descriptive evidence on application similarity within middle schools and neighborhoods, and shows how similarity varies with student characteristics.
We find White and Asian students are more likely to have choices in common than Black and Hispanic students, as are students whose families speak specific languages at home, such as Chinese and Russian. High-achieving students from all racial/ethnic backgrounds are more likely to share choices with other high-achieving students in their school than lower-achieving students are to share choices. A direct implication of these findings is that students who make dissimilar choices are less likely to remain peers than those who make similar choices. In NYC, we show that White and Asian students are more likely to experience continuity in peers as they transition from middle to high school than are Black and Hispanic students.