The proposed paper examines how social background characteristics affect the academic achievement and grade careers of Norwegian economics students. The paper examines the effect of social background characteristics on the economists' grades on: i) a compulsory preparatory course in philosophy, logic and the theory of science (examen philosophicum), ii) on the exam after the first year of economics- studies, and, iii) on the higher degree of economics. One central question is: Is the effect of social background characteristics greater at the start or at the end of the educational career? Another related question is to what extent the social differences change during the career in higher education, and we will control for previous grades in the analyses.Based on an understanding of social background as a multi-dimensioned phenomenon, the paper examines the effects of parents' education (level and field), parents' income, and parents' social class (derived from their occupation). And the paper also poses the question of along which dimension of social background the differences are biggest. The paper shows that the parents' social class is of great importance for the offspring's grades, and that parents' income also have an effect on the grades. Students with parents who are academics, performs significantly better than their fellow students with working class background, on each stage of their educational career. The differences are smallest on the preparatory level, and biggest on the higher degree level. At the last stage of the educational career do sons and daughters of business managers and of bureaucrats, also outperform the working class-students. Furthermore, on this final stage of the educational career do students with economist-parents outperform other students with similar class background. These social differences remain significant also after controlling for grades at lower levels. The effects of social background, thus, are not constant throughout the educational career of economists. Rather, they seem to increase. Theoretically, the paper will relate to recent theories of social class, and, to the debate on the new middle classes of highly educated. It will also address the question of the coming of Meritocracy. The main emphasis in the interpretations will be placed on cultural differences between status groups: both cultural differences in values and ambitions, and on cultural differences in resources (primarily cultural and social capital). Both dimensions of cultural differences contribute to the understanding of the observed differences.The data consists of all higher level graduates in economics from Norwegian universities, in the period between 1981 and 1996. These data is supplemented with census data (from 1970 and 1980) for each individual. Social background will be measured as parents' education, income, and, occupational class. The effects of gender will also be estimated.