Under good growing conditions, juvenile Atlantic salmon metamorphose into the migratory smolt stage at 1+ or 2+ years of age. The life-history decision on whether or not to migrate at 1+ years is made in July–August of the previous year. After this time, populations develop a bimodal size distribution, the larger fish (upper modal group) being the 1+ smolts and the lower modal group being fish that will smolt at 2+. Fish of high social status are more likely to become 1+ smolts. We examined the causal nature of this relationship by manipulating status within a laboratory population of sibling fish. The absolute status of individual fish was estimated within 2 weeks of first feeding. Relative status was then manipulated by dividing the population into two, half containing the fish with the highest absolute status (high ranking) and the remaining half of fish of lowest absolute status (low ranking). The status of individually marked fish was then determined within each of the two groups. Individual growth rates were monitored until smolting strategies were apparent. There was a complete overlap in the sizes of subsequent upper and lower modal group parr in early June, but from late June onwards fish in the upper modal group grew faster. The high- and low-ranking groups did not differ either in mean growth rates or in the proportions of fish adopting the alternative smolting strategies. However, they differed in the factors that influenced an individual's developmental strategy: within the high-ranking group, relative social status in June was a significant predictor of whether a fish would smolt aged 1+, whereas length at that time was not. In contrast, no relationship between status and smolting strategy was found in the low-ranking group, where differences in status were less clear-cut and had less influence on growth. Instead, age of smolting could be predicted from early growth rate. These results demonstrate that the influence of status on smolting depends on the extent to which fish of high status suppress the growth of those lower in the hierarchy.