Short Summary
Eighth graders surrounded by competitive classmates choose more ambitious careers — but not all students benefit equally
Most adolescents in Switzerland face one of the most consequential decisions of their educational pathway at the early age of 14: choosing an apprenticeship from around 200 options, from baker to information technologist. In our new study (Schilter et al., 2026), we show that non-cognitive skills of their classmates play an important role in this choice.
Students whose classmates were more competitive ended up in occupations that pay roughly US$ 1,340 more per year — about 1.2 percent of average earnings — and that are more academically demanding. Switzerland gives us a clean setting to study this: career choice is condensed into a few months of eighth grade, when classmates form a stable peer group.
Why it matters: countries from Germany to the United States debate how to compose classrooms and design school transitions. Our findings show classmates shape not only test scores but also long-term career paths — and that mixing in competitive peers does not benefit all students equally.
Key Findings
- Students who are exposed to classrooms with 17 percentage points (one standard deviation) more competitive classmates chose occupations that pay roughly US$ 1,340 more per year.
- Students with competitive peers enter more academically demanding occupations and — for male students — more sought-after ones, without being more likely to fail their training.
- They are less likely to delay entry into the labor market: the same 17 percentage point (one standard deviation) increase reduces delayed entry by about three percentage points.
- Some students pay a cost: the average time-to-graduation rises when more peers are competitive, and some switch to less demanding occupations. Still, at least 82 percent of the earnings gain survives.
- Gains flow to already-advantaged students. Those without a parent holding a university degree gain far less, and for some students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the effect may even turn negative.
Relevance Today
Classroom composition is central to education debates in many countries. Tracking, integration in vocational training, and school transitions all rest on assumptions about how peers interact. Our results show that competitiveness of peers shapes career outcomes — yet exposure to more competitive peers cannot close gaps for disadvantaged students.
Author Quote
“Competitive peers channel their classmates to enter better-paid, more demanding, and — among male students — more popular occupations. By the same logic, however, they cannot be used to level the playing field: students from disadvantaged backgrounds do not seem to benefit from them and may even be harmed.”
Reference: Based on RFBerlin Discussion Paper No. 058/26: Schilter, C., Lüthi, S., & Wolter, S. C. (2026). Competitive Peers: The Way to Higher Paying Jobs? RFBerlin.
Research Summary
Context and Motivation
At 14, most Swiss teenagers choose an apprenticeship from over 200 options — a decision that opens or closes doors to specific careers and earnings paths. Using unique experimental and administrative data, we show that this high-stakes decision is influenced by the competitiveness of students’ classmates. Students whose eighth-grade peers were more competitive ended up in apprenticeships that were in occupations with USD 1,340 higher expected annual earnings, more academically demanding, and — for male students —more popular. But the gains are unevenly spread. They go mainly to students whose own school performance already puts more ambitious occupations within reach, and to those from more advantaged families.
Context and Motivation
In Switzerland, roughly two-thirds of teenagers enter the labor market through apprenticeships after lower-secondary school. The choice happens during a few intense months in eighth grade, when classmates form a stable peer group. Importantly, most of these apprenticeships (almost 90%) are firm-based training options, which require them to go through competitive application procedures with employers. Apprenticeships differ considerably in pay, prestige, popularity, and academic demands. On average, a commercial apprentice earns substantially more over a lifetime than someone training as a hairdresser or florist. Understanding what tips students toward more ambitious choices is therefore central to education and labor market policy.
Researchers have long known that personality traits like competitiveness shape educational and career outcomes. They also know peers matter, especially through grades and motivation. Until now, little was known about how peers’ personality traits — particularly competitiveness — affect classmates’ actual labor market choices. Our study fills that gap with rare data: experimentally measured competitiveness for entire school classes, linked to ten years of administrative education records, with less than five percent sample attrition.
Key Findings
Competitive peers push students toward higher-paying occupations
We took the lab to the classrooms and study around 1,000 Swiss eighth graders whose willingness to compete was measured in an experiment in 2013. We link these measures to administrative records covering each student’s full educational history. By comparing students within the same school and track — quasi-randomly mixed into new classes at the start of lower-secondary school — we isolate the effect of peer competitiveness. A one-standard-deviation rise in peer competitiveness raised the expected annual earnings of the chosen apprenticeship occupation by about USD 1,340. The effect remains, although it is slightly smaller, when we look at the occupation students ultimately complete.
The mechanism is broad ambition, not STEM sorting
Students with more competitive peers chose occupations with markedly higher academic requirements — roughly the difference between librarian and information technologist. Male students also chose occupations that were more popular on the apprenticeship market, in other words, the ones with a stronger competition for entry. But there was no effect on choosing STEM fields specifically. The pattern fits a story of observational learning: competitive peers raise the visibility of ambitious search and application behavior, encourage classmates to aim higher, and expand what they see as feasible.
Most students manage higher demands, but some pay a cost
Graduation rates are not affected — over 95 percent of students graduate. Students with competitive peers were less likely to delay entry into the labor market. However, they took slightly longer to graduate —driven both by grade repetition and by mid-training switches to less demanding occupations. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests at least 82 percent of the earnings gain survives the costs associated with the higher prevalence of such delays.
Benefits are unevenly distributed
The effect looks similar for male and female students but differs sharply on two other dimensions. Students with stronger academic performance within their class — those positioned to translate ambition into actual offers — gain substantially more. In updated analyses, we also find that benefits concentrate among students from advantaged family backgrounds. Students whose parents lack a tertiary degree gain significantly less. For students with parents from former Yugoslavia — a group facing well-documented hiring discrimination in Switzerland — the estimated effect may even turn negative.
Our empirical strategy supports a causal reading. Class assignments are made when students move from primary to lower-secondary school, with schools balancing class sizes and gender ratios but not considering competitiveness. A formal test confirms that peer competitiveness in eighth-grade classes is statistically indistinguishable from random within each school and track. Our results are robust to controls for peers’ grades, socio-economic background, risk aversion, overconfidence, and locus of control.
Policy Implications
Our findings speak directly to debates about classroom composition and integration. On the upside, mixing students by personality — not just by grades — could produce real labor market gains. Having competitive classmates would raise career sights and help most students enter better-paid occupations without raising dropout rates.
The cautionary side is just as important. Competitive peers benefit advantaged students, but they are not a tool for disadvantaged students to catch up. Those students do not gain from this peer dynamic, and some may even be set back. Helping them would require other measures.
Conclusion
Peer competitiveness shapes career choices. Competitive eighth-grade classmates help most students aim higher and secure better apprenticeships, with the gains clearly outweighing the costs on average. But the benefits flow primarily to students already best positioned to seize them.
