The article examines how social background characteristics affect the academic achievement and grade careers of Norwegian economics students. The analyses show that the parents' social class is of great importance for the offspring's grades. Students with parents who are academics perform better than their fellow students of working-class background, on each stage of their university career. The differences are smallest at the preparatory level, and biggest at the master's level. At the last stage of the educational career, students with economist parents outperform other students with similar class backgrounds. The effects of social background are not constant throughout the educational career of economists. Rather, they seem to increase. Appendix 1 contains standardized grades and descriptives of the independent variables in tabular form. (Contains 2 tables and 5 notes.)