Performance and perception: differences in self-assessment between students

Participation to higher education continuously differs for some groups in society. We investigate whether this gap stems from a mis-perception of ability creating additional expected costs to studying. University students are poor at estimating their own testperformance (in both Math and English) and over-estimate their ability but female, white and lower social class have less inflated values of themselves. Similar conclusions are obtained amongst younger individuals for measures of mathematical confidence rather than performance at a specific test. Moreover, high school pupils with a more positive self-perception have greater expectations regarding attending higher education even after controlling for ability and student’s characteristics.