This work studies peers’ influence in the process of aspirations formation. I combine novel data on Brazilian students’ networks with administrative data and investigate whether students’ college aspirations spill over to their friends. The employed methodology acknowledges that social cliques are formed endogenously and addresses this challenge by modeling friendship formation based on similarities in predetermined characteristics. I then use the characteristics of predicted friends of friends as instruments for friends’ aspirations. The results show evidence of quite large peer effects on aspirations: An extra friend aspiring to go to college increases, on average, the likelihood that a student will also aspire to it by 11.25 percent. Compliance with social norms and school effort might be the mechanisms in place. I also find evidence that friends’ aspirations decrease an average of 28.27 percent the likelihood of students’ dropping out of school before secondary school graduation and, therefore, directly impact the likelihood of a student to actually attend college. Jessica holds a PhD in Public Policy and Administration from Bocconi University. She is a Research Fellow at the Inter-American Development Bank. Her research interests are social economics, education, health, and development economics.
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