Longitudinal multilevel path models (7,997 students, 44 high schools, 4 years) evaluated the effects of school-average achievement and perceived school status on academic self-concept in Hong Kong, a collectivist culture with a highly achievement-segregated high school system. Consistent with a priori predictions based on the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), higher school-average achievements led to lower academic self-concepts (contrast effect), whereas higher perceived school status had a counter-balancing positive effect on self-concept (reflected glory, assimilation effect). The negative BFLPE was the net effect of counterbalancing influences, stronger negative contrast effects, and weaker positive assimilation effects, so that controlling perceived school status led to purer, and even more negative, contrast effects. Attending a school where school-average achievement is high simultaneously results in a more demanding basis of comparison for one's own accomplishments (the stronger negative contrast effect) and a source of pride (the weaker positive assimilation effect). (Contains 57 references.) (Author/SM)