School differences on whether and where students apply to university

Going to university is a key route to enhancing life opportunities for young people and for promoting social mobility. Despite the action of widening participation programs, substantial sociodemographic inequalities in participation persist. Few studies have focused on the role that school attended may play in exacerbating or mitigating these inequalities. We explore these issues for England via analysing student-level linked DfE-Ofqual-UCAS administrative data. We find substantial variation in application rates across schools, particularly regarding applications to Russell Group institutions. Crucially, meaningful school differences persist even after adjustment for school differences in student prior achievement and sociodemographics. These findings suggest that unmodelled school-level policies, practices, and context may be influencing students’ decision making. We conclude that policymakers and university admissions teams would benefit from closer monitoring of differences in application rates across schools and potentially using this information when devising interventions to widen participation and act on higher education inequalities.