Exam Shocks & Costly Responses: A Q&A with Annabel Thornton

Annabel Thornton
Annabel Thornton

Q&A with Annabel Thornton
Exam Shocks & Costly Reponses

On June 4, Annabel Thornton, a PhD candidate from U of T’s Department of Economics, supervised by Professor Dwayne Benjamin, delivered a lunch and learn session on how exam scheduling can affect student performance, choice of major, and even future  earnings upon graduation.

We caught up with her to find out more about her research, what her findings could suggest, and how she decided to study economics in the first place.

AT: My fascination with economics began when I read the popular book, Freakonomics. Before that, I had only associated economics with money and finance. This book opened my eyes to how economics also examines strategies in soccer penalty shoot outs, the best ways to incentivize real estate agents, and even the empirical claim that Roe vs. Wade led to the greatest crime drop in U.S. history 30 years later. Realizing that economics is a tool kit to explore all my interests – sports, history, psychology, and more – I was hooked! I studied economics for both my undergraduate and master’s degrees.  

AT: I like to joke that I did a PhD because I don’t like being told what to do, but there is some truth to that! Since I was a teenager, I thought that getting paid well to study whatever I found interesting was the greatest job description ever, which sparked my dream of becoming a professor. After finishing my undergraduate degree, while job hunting I realized, that most jobs I was interested in required a PhD in economics. So, the decision was pretty easy for me.

AT: I have always been interested in the real-world choices of individuals rather than those of countries or firms, or even theoretical choices. This naturally led me to applied microeconomics. Most of my research ideas and projects come from anecdotal experiences or observations about my friends, classmates, and people I interact with.  
 
I focus on decisions young people make because they are so consequential to long term trajectories. I like the idea that my research can help young people make decisions that improve their happiness or wellbeing in the long run.

AT: I have been interested in the relationship between grades and college major choices for a while. I switched from history to economics after my first year at university due to changing interests, but I saw many students, especially women, refuse to major in economics because they felt they weren’t good enough based on their first-year grades.  
 
As I got older, I heard more friends regret their major choices, often dictated by their grades rather than interests. I wanted to explore how sensitive these choices were to first-year grades, and exam scheduling became the perfect tool to study this.

AT: I found two major things. First, having some “bad luck” in exam scheduling significantly affects course grades. Second, students change their majors because of this “bad luck.” Specifically, students with two exams on the same day struggle on the second exam, resulting in a course grade drop of almost 2 percentage points. Consequently, they are about 6 percentage points less likely to major in the subject area of the second exam.
 
These findings suggest that students often cannot differentiate between a bad grade due to poor ability in a subject area and one due to “bad luck.” Therefore, they respond to lower grades by selecting different majors.  

AT: This is tricky. The only real improvement I could suggest would be to ensure exam scheduling decisions prioritize student success. However, even if we eliminated the “bad luck” of scheduling, students would still face various other sources of “bad luck” impacting their major choices. The solution shouldn’t be about eliminating “bad luck” entirely, but rather in helping students make better choices for themselves.

MM: What do you like to do in your spare time?


SS: I enjoy baking, cooking, reading, and exploring the many trails and conservation areas around my home.

RI: In my spare time, I enjoy cooking and teaching Arabic as a volunteer.