Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium Winter Conference

We use data on ten years of entering students at Reed College to test for peer effects among three groups of peers: roommates, residents in the same dorm grouping, and classmates in a required freshman class. In each case, peer groupings are apparently random, allowing us to avoid statistical problems that often make testing for peer effects impossible. We find strong effects of the academic quality of roommates and dormmates on student achievement. We do not find evidence of classmate peer effects