| Summary: | This study explores the choices and experiences and future aspirations of Icelandic and Finnish students. When the research is conducted, they are finishing their matriculation exams at the upper-secondary education level from schools known as elite schools in terms of academic performance. The paper is based on the authors’ recent publication (Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir & Kosunen, 2022) with a deeper analysis of the Icelandic case and a more nuanced analysis of the institutional habitus of the two elite schools in Reykjavík. The Nordic countries are often presented as model societies with high levels of happiness, commitments to democratic and meritocratic processes and low levels of corruption and elitism. However, in recent years, the social and cultural landscapes of the educational field in Nordic cities have been changing into multicultural, class divergent and marketoriented societies. Recent studies show the increasing correlation between student achievement and b) their backgrounds (Elsa Eiríksdóttir et al., 2022) as well as b) socio-geographical accumulation of economic and/or educational capital in certain neighbourhoods and schools (Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir et al., 2020). The hierarchy among schools at the upper-secondary level has become steeper, and the route to success through the education system is muddier. Thus, exploring if and how elitist institutions and identities are constructed and socially reproduced in Icelandic educational contexts and practices is important. The elites are the dominant agents in a certain social space, the field of power. Elite identity formation is shaped differently from one nation to another, but generally, the secondary and higher education system has an important role in its (re)production (Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). In both countries, all the general uppersecondary schools can selectively assess their students based on academics. In Finland, there is a standardised matriculation exam, but in Iceland, there are no standardised tests that ...
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