A window seat improved success in entrance exams

In the exam or in the entrance exam, it is an advantage if you can get next to the window and can sometimes look out of the exam tasks.

The benefit of a window seat came to the fore in a study by Boston University Xuan Li and his colleagues analyzed the results of 3,700 young people in university entrance exams in China.

In the entrance exams the applicants were randomly selected to do tasks in the window and other places of the exam room.

So, as if in a natural experiment, the researchers could compare the results of the subjects who had a window view and those who sat in the interior of the room, without anything other than the outside view separating these groups.

It turned out that those sitting in the window seat fared a little better than others.

The advantage was not very big, but still noticeable. Those sitting by the outside window were 2.8 percentage points more likely to get into a prestigious university than the controls.

The window seat benefited both those who took part in the exams in natural sciences and humanities.

Results according to the researchers, the best explanation is the theory according to which attentiveness is revived in nature or simply by looking out the window.

Young people, who may otherwise have difficulties concentrating on tasks, benefited the most from the window view.

The researchers could identify such young people in their data because they had at their disposal the high school teacher’s assessments of the student’s personality and behavior.

The study was published by Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization – science journal.

Published in Tiede magazine 7/2026