Learning about Oneself: The Effects of Performance Feedback on School Choice

We design and implement a field experiment that provides students from less advantaged backgrounds with individualized feedback on performance in a mock version of the admission exam used to ration seats in public high schools in Mexico City. The intervention reduces the gap between expected and actual performance and shrinks the variance of individual ability distributions. Guided by a simple model in which Bayesian agents choose school tracks based on their perceived ability distribution, we empirically document the interplay between variance reductions and mean changes of beliefs in shaping curricular choices. The shift in stated preferences over high school tracks enabled by the intervention affects admission outcomes within the assignment mechanism, with students who score higher in the mock test being assigned into more academically-oriented options