Can school characteristics influence university entrance scores?

This article examines the importance of schools relative to individual characteristics in explaining Tertiary Entrance Rank scores, using Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth data. The school characteristics explain around 20 per cent of the variance in Tertiary Entrance Rank scores, with the measured school characteristics explaining around 7 percentage points, indicating that idiosyncratic factors-which we interpret as reflecting schools' ethos-dominate. School sector is an important explanator whilst the government, independent and Catholic systems all contain 'good' schools, schools that have low Tertiary Entrance Rank scores, after controlling for individual characteristics, are dominated by the government sector.