Student Performance on High School Exit Exams in the Presence of Merit Scholarships: Evidence from Colombia

A number of educational jurisdictions provide merit scholarships for attendance at post-secondary institutions based on standardized test score performance or high school grades. Colombia¿s recently-introduced Ser Pilo Paga program is one such example. We seek to examine the effect of the program¿s introduction on high school exit exam test scores across the entire unconditional distribution. We anticipate heterogeneous effects depending on student academic ability, with very high or very low performing students to not be affected and for marginal students to see the biggest performance increases. This research will shine additional light on the role of incentives in academic performance.