Is success in school infectious?

A new article has revealed the "social contagion" of academic success within children's friendship networks. The authors, from a school and university in New York, analyzed the correlation between high school students' academic progress over one year and the social environment that surrounds them in their friendship network. Information about the students' social network came from the results of an electronic survey asking them about their friendships, while data on their academic progress came from their school. Students whose friends' average GPA was greater than their own had a higher tendency toward increasing their academic ranking over time. Conversely, the ranking decreased for students whose friends' average GPA was less than their own.