Private highs: Investigating university overmatch among students from elite schools

Inequality in elite college attendance is a key driver of intergenerational mobility. This paper shifts the focus upstream to examine how elite high school attendance - specifically, enrollment in UK private, fee-paying schools - shapes university destin- ations across the academic ability distribution. Using linked administrative data, we show that the main advantage conferred by private schools is not that their high- achieving students are more likely to access elite degree courses, but rather that their lower-achieving students are more likely to `overmatch' by attending more selective degree courses than might be expected given their grades. In particular, we show that lower attaining pupils from fee-paying high schools enrol in university courses around 15 percentiles higher ranked than similarly qualified state school students. The greater propensity of private school students to overmatch is driven largely by differences in application behavior, with even the weakest private school students aiming higher than their higher achieving state school peers.