Self-assessment Accuracy, Overconfidence and Student Performance

We have analyzed results of the Brazilian National Student Performance exam, applied by the Ministry of Education, to verify overconfidence in students. Looking at 549,487 student-level observations, we estimated an overconfidence score, comparing the perceived performance with the actual grade in two different parts of the exam. Ordered logit models suggest that overconfidence in Brazilian students is positively correlated with income and that overconfident students took less time to complete the exam. Contrary to previous studies conducted in other countries, male students presented lower overconfidence in our sample. Moreover, performance was inversely related to the overconfidence score, indicating that students with better performance “know more about what they do not know”, as already widely discussed in the education literature.

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