Early field-of-study choices have large effects on students’ later lives. However, young students do not necessarily make decisions based on their long-term goals only: social influence may also play a significant role. MiSoC researcher Zsófia Boda and her co-author Roxanne Korthals studied the effect of friends on field-of-study choice by focusing on friends’ preferences in Dutch classrooms. In the Netherlands, field-of-study choices are made early (age 15), when students are most susceptible to social influence. Moreover, after making the field-of-study decision, students are reshuffled into same-field classrooms: this decision therefore impacts how much time students spend together at school and how easy it is to continue friendships. This further strengthens the potential influence of friends. The study relies on panel data of around 2,000 Dutch secondary school students and examines how friends’ planned field-of-study choices explain own choices later. It finds evidence for influence of early friends for specializing in STEM, but not for the three other possible fields of study.