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Early Admissions at Selective Colleges
Abstract
Early admissions are widely used by selective colleges and universities. We identify some basic facts about early admissions policies, including the admissions advantage enjoyed by early applicants and patterns in application behavior, and propose a game-theoretic model that matches these facts. The key feature of the model is that colleges want to admit students who are enthusiastic about attending, and early admissions programs give students an opportunity to signal this enthusiasm. (JEL C78, I23)
... My first contribution is to explain the real-world early-admissions market configuration as a result of college competition. This cannot be deduced from related articles, such as Avery and Levin (2010), Kim (2010), and Lee (2009), because they abstract from key competitive aspects of the market. My model is closest to that in Avery and Levin (2010), with two main differences: I allow need-blind colleges to choose an earlyadmissions program and a financial aid policy, and I consider students heterogeneous in wealth. ...
... This cannot be deduced from related articles, such as Avery and Levin (2010), Kim (2010), and Lee (2009), because they abstract from key competitive aspects of the market. My model is closest to that in Avery and Levin (2010), with two main differences: I allow need-blind colleges to choose an earlyadmissions program and a financial aid policy, and I consider students heterogeneous in wealth. The goal of Avery and Levin (2010) is to analyze how colleges with a preference for student fit use early admissions to improve their matches and yield rates. 5 Kim (2010) studies the relationship between ED and students' wealth; the author considers need-blind, tuition-maximizing colleges that use ED to identify wealthy students. ...
... My model is closest to that in Avery and Levin (2010), with two main differences: I allow need-blind colleges to choose an earlyadmissions program and a financial aid policy, and I consider students heterogeneous in wealth. The goal of Avery and Levin (2010) is to analyze how colleges with a preference for student fit use early admissions to improve their matches and yield rates. 5 Kim (2010) studies the relationship between ED and students' wealth; the author considers need-blind, tuition-maximizing colleges that use ED to identify wealthy students. Unlike my model, Kim (2010)'s only considers ED (not REA) and does not allow colleges to decide whether to offer early admissions. ...
I study a college-admissions model with two need-blind colleges and heterogeneous students. In a game in which colleges can choose a financial aid policy and either binding, nonbinding, or no early admissions, a unique equilibrium outcome exists. In equilibrium, the more prestigious and wealthier college is more selective, has a more generous financial aid policy, and offers nonbinding early admissions, whereas the other college offers a binding program. Compared to the counterfactual in which only regular admissions are offered, early admissions make the more prestigious college worse off, the other college better off, and students, in the aggregate, better off.
... 4 One can find analyses that emphasize university preferences on incoming students. Avery and Levin (2010), for instance, describe universities that prefer students with a high ability and those who are eager to attend; to accomplish this objective, each university strategically makes a decision on admission. There are also other studies focusing on university activities other than the selection of students, such as teaching and research activities. ...
... 7. Another strategy is early admission, which helps universities get good students at earlier stages (Avery et al. 2004;Avery and Levin 2010). Utilizing the classification by Hansmann (1981) of revenue sources of nonprofit organizations, Winston (1999) defines universities as "donativecommercial nonprofits. ...
... Competitive environments surrounding universities, moreover, vary according to university ranking (Doi 2007;Marginson 2006): higher-ranking universities are facing intense global competition; intermediate universities are open to fierce national competition; and lower-ranking universities are competing for students, caring about the quantity, rather than quality, of students. Such different competitive environments incline different universities to have different goals and to adopt different admission strategies (Avery and Levin 2010). By taking into account such heterogeneity of universities, the analysis could reveal a wider variety of ways for universities to deal with citizenship education. ...
... Smith (2006) andHafalir et al. (2018) provided an algorithm focused on students' efforts, as compared to the focus on the strategy of the colleges in our analysis. Avery and Levin (2010) studied early admissions as a way for students to signal college-specific quality. Chade et al. (2014) developed a decentralized Bayesian model under a particular preference structure. ...
... Colleges can use mechanisms such as early admission and waiting list. Colleges process the early admission applications before the regular admission with the requirement of binding or non-binding terms for students to accept offers early (Avery et al., 2003;Avery and Levin, 2010). The mechanism of the waiting list allows colleges to wait-list some students during regular admission. ...
... For example, students apply to colleges in a given period. Under the assumption that students incur negligible application costs, submitting applications to all colleges is the dominant strategy as students lack information on how colleges evaluate their academic ability or personal essays (Avery and Levin, 2010;Che and Koh, 2016). ...
Matching markets are often organized in a multi-stage and decentralized manner. Moreover, participants in real-world matching markets often have uncertain preferences. This article develops a framework for learning optimal strategies in such settings, based on a nonparametric statistical approach and variational analysis. We propose an efficient algorithm, built upon concepts of "lower uncertainty bound" and "calibrated decentralized matching," for maximizing the participants' expected payoff. We show that there exists a welfare-versus-fairness trade-off that is characterized by the uncertainty level of acceptance. Participants will strategically act in favor of a low uncertainty level to reduce competition and increase expected payoff. We study signaling mechanisms that help to clear the congestion in such decentralized markets and find that the effects of signaling are heterogeneous, showing a dependence on the participants and matching stages. We prove that participants can be better off with multi-stage matching compared to single-stage matching. The deferred acceptance procedure assumes no limit on the number of stages and attains efficiency and fairness but may make some participants worse off than multi-stage matching. We demonstrate aspects of the theoretical predictions through simulations and an experiment using real data from college admissions.
... While one could argue that mechanisms that are efficient could be implemented through decentralized systems, where each university decides independently what students to accept, it is much harder to see how a wasteful mechanism like the one we discuss could be implemented in this way (surely, the university with unassigned vacancies would contact the unassigned students to have them attend the university). 16 15 Indeed, it is sufficient that there is a unique optimal ordered allocation rule when α h + α l ≥ 1. 16 Decentralized school choice systems have been studied by Avery and Levin (2010) and Chade, Lewis, and Smith (2014). In the latter paper, the low-quality school might end up with vacancies in equilibrium, but that is a product of assuming that schools are able to commit to an acceptance threshold before students choose whether to accept their offers. ...
... Each agent is only uncertain about whether his signal will reflect his type, and not about how large his type and/or signal are/is relative to others. Even though assuming a continuum of agents is relatively standard (see Avery and Levin (2010), Chade, Lewis, and Smith (2014), and Li (2021), for example), the reader might wonder whether the results presented in Section 5 extend to a model with finitely many objects and agents. ...
Objects of different quality are to be allocated to agents. Agents can receive at most one object, and there are not enough high‐quality objects for every agent. The value to the social planner from allocating objects to any given agent depends on that agent's private information. The social planner is unable to use transfers to give incentives for agents to convey their private information. Instead, she is able to imperfectly verify their reports through signals that are positively affiliated with each agent's type. We characterize mechanisms that maximize the social planner's expected payoff. In the optimal mechanism, each agent chooses one of various tracks, which are characterized by two thresholds. If the agent's signal exceeds the upper threshold of the chosen track, the agent receives a high‐quality object, if it is between the two thresholds, he receives a low‐quality object, and if it is below the lower threshold, he receives no object.
... Several markets, on the other hand, such as college or graduate admission markets, still remain decentralized. There are rich analyses of these markets too, mostly focusing on participants' equilibrium strategies in various environments (see Avery and Levin 2010;Chade et al. 2014;Che and Koh 2016 for examples). Among these works, Avery and Levin (2010) analyze early action and early decision in college admissions, from which we borrow the basic setup. ...
... There are rich analyses of these markets too, mostly focusing on participants' equilibrium strategies in various environments (see Avery and Levin 2010;Chade et al. 2014;Che and Koh 2016 for examples). Among these works, Avery and Levin (2010) analyze early action and early decision in college admissions, from which we borrow the basic setup. This line of research, however, has not explored how financial aid affects admission outcomes, especially when students have different socioeconomic backgrounds. ...
In college admission, financial aid plays an important role in students’ enrollment decision as well as their preparation for college application. We analyze how different types of financial aid affect these decisions and admission outcomes. We consider two financial aid regimes—need-based and merit-based—in a simple college admission model and characterize respective equilibria. We find that a more competitive college has a higher admission cutoff under a need-based regime than under a merit-based regime. A less competitive college, on the other hand, benefits from a merit-based regime as it admits students with a higher average ability than it does under no aid. We next allow colleges to choose their own financial aid system so as to account for a stylized fact in the US college admissions. We show that when one college is ranked above the other, it is a dominant strategy for the higher-ranked college to offer need-based aid and for the lower-ranked college to offer merit-based aid.
... Within college access pathways, early admissions programs are notoriously tied to larger institutional strategies regarding prestige and financial resources (Avery et al., 2003;Machung, 1998). Research on early admissions has stressed the inextricable link between economic competitiveness and enrollment management (Avery & Levin, 2010;Che & Koh, 2016). For example, Avery and Levin (2010) emphasized that early admissions programs have both a sorting and competitive effect. ...
... Research on early admissions has stressed the inextricable link between economic competitiveness and enrollment management (Avery & Levin, 2010;Che & Koh, 2016). For example, Avery and Levin (2010) emphasized that early admissions programs have both a sorting and competitive effect. The "sorting effect" reveals how students convey enthusiasm for an institution, while the "competitive effect" illustrates how institutions prioritize their own needs (here, to yield academically adept students and be seen as a competitive campus). ...
Scholars have persistently recognized inequities in undergraduate college admissions and student engagement, especially with regard to specialized practices such as early admissions (i.e., early action and early decision, or EA/ED) and high-impact practices (HIPs). However, researchers have not yet considered whether the known social privileges of early admissions are associated with compounding privileges in terms of students’ participation in HIPs. Guided by a conceptual framework that places social capital and cumulative advantage in conversation with student engagement, this quantitative study explores whether the social privileges present among EA/ED students relate to greater participation in structures of college engagement, operationalized through the lens of HIPs. I use an analytic sample of 7657 undergraduate students who completed The Freshman Survey and the College Senior Survey (2013–2017), both administered by the Higher Education Research Institute, employing descriptive and multiple regression analyses to investigate the relationship between early admissions and later college engagement. Descriptive findings document many of the systemic privileges that EA/ED students hold and reveal that EA/ED students participate in certain types of HIPs more frequently than their regular admit peers. Further, regression results document several important predictors of HIP participation, including students’ social identities (e.g., sex, race, class), high school engagement and achievement, early admit status, and collegiate context, suggesting that access to college student engagement is not value neutral. Practical implications discuss the importance of questioning how—and for whom—specialized admissions and engagement programs serve.
... Here we also document a growing inequality in time devoted to children's educational activities by parental education. Ramey and Ramey (2010) find that an important part of the divergence in time investments by parents with different educational attainment in the US is due to travel and activities of older children and argue that this fact is a reflection of children from more educated family backgrounds engaging in more extracurricular activities that may be important for securing a place at a selective university, as suggested by Bound et al. (2009) and Avery and Levin (2010). In the UK we have shown a sustained gap in educational time between college educated and less than college educated parents which is consistent with the relative larger weight of previous academic performance in deciding college admission in the UK compared to the US (Jerrim et al., 2012;Bhattacharya et al., 2012). ...
... In contrast with increasing education gradient in travel and structured activity time, Panels A and B of Column 3 show a convergence in the education gradient in homework and study time from about three hours per week at the beginning of the period to over one hour at the end of the period. Overall this evidence is consistent with college educated parents increasingly devoting more time to organize children's extracurricular activities rather than to helping them with homework as emphasized by Ramey and Ramey (2010), in line 9 with the relative importance of extracurricular accomplishments in gaining access to selective higher education institutions in the US (Bound et al., 2009;Avery and Levin, 2010). Table 2 show the corresponding results for UK children. ...
We use novel diary surveys coupled with universities' administrative student data for the last three decades to document that increased competition for university places at elite institutions in the United Kingdom contributes to explain growing gaps in time investments between college and non-college educated parents. Competition for university places in the UK grew significantly during the 1980s and early 1990s, and gradually diminished afterwards. We find that the gap in time investments by college and non-college educated parents and their children widened up precisely during this first period, especially in terms of human capital enhancing activities.
... Consider the case in which firm and worker quality are observable, but conditional on firm and worker quality, an applicant's acceptance likelihood is unobservable. 4 In this setting, the opportunity cost of signaling to a given firm is negatively correlated with the applicant's interest in the firm (as in the signaling model of Spence, 1973). Thus, on average, applicants who signal are more likely to accept an o↵er, relative to observationally-equivalent applicants who were invited for interviews, and did not have the opportunity to signal. ...
... Budish et al. (2017) study an MBA course allocation system that solves for the approximate competitive equilibrium for course allocation -finding a price for each course -and assigning students to schedules based on their reported preferences and an endowment of "fake money."4 More precisely, we assume firm and worker quality are observable up to an idiosyncratic noise over which neither firm nor employee can credibly signal. ...
We study whether there are improvements in worker-firm matching when employers and applicants can credibly signal their interest in a match. Using a detailed résumé dataset of more than 400 applicants from one university over five years, we analyze a matching process in which firms fill some of their interview slots by invitation and the remainder are filled by an auction. Consistent with the predictions of a signaling model, we find the auction is valuable for less desirable firms trying to hire high desirability applicants. Second, we find evidence that is consistent with the auction benefiting overlooked applicants. Candidates who are less likely to be invited for an interview (e.g., non-U.S. citizens) are hired after having the opportunity to interview through the auction. Among hires, these candidates are more represented among auction winners than invited interviewees, and this difference is more pronounced at more desirable firms. Finally, counterfactual analysis shows the auction increases the number and quality of hires for less desirable firms, and total hires in the market.
... Future research could use signaling as a theoretical basis and prior work on the college application process (Avery & Levin, 2010;Knight & Schiff, 2022;Smith et al., 2015) as an empirical model for how to study job application frictions and the circumstances in which they can create credible signals of job-seeker quality and intent. While public data on the use of mechanisms that increase (or reduce) application frictions in hiring are less accessible than for college admissions, it should be possible to get some insights from scraping recruitment portals or enlisting the active cooperation of specific firms. ...
The visibility of qualifications is of central importance to labor search in general and the person-job matching process in particular. However, despite the emergence of LinkedIn and a wide variety of other labor matching technologies (LMTs) that magnify qualifications visibility (QV) and shape it in non-obvious ways, there has been very little attention to QV as a concept, its antecedents, and its consequences. Accordingly, the objectives of this paper are to: (1) define QV and elaborate its dimensionality, (2) delineate how it is magnified and shaped by LMTs, (3) draw on theories of visibility, signaling, and strategic self-presentation to devise a theoretical model of labor search that places QV at its center, and (4) work through the implications of this model for future research on the influence of emerging LMTs and QV on labor search in an organizational context.
... 10 Various other papers model aspects of college admissions that we do not address, such as early admissions (e.g., Avery and Levin, 2010), managing enrollment uncertainty (e.g., Che and Koh, 2016), college tuition determination (e.g., Fu, 2014), and which colleges a student should apply to (e.g., Chade and Smith, 2006;Ali and Shorrer, 2021). Liang et al. (2022) explain why society may choose to prevent a college from using test scores; we show why a college may itself choose to not see test scores. ...
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend of many colleges moving to test-optional, and in some cases test-blind, admissions policies. A frequent claim is that by not seeing standardized test scores, a college is able to admit a student body that it prefers, such as one with more diversity. But how can observing less information allow a college to improve its decisions? We argue that test-optional policies may be driven by social pressure on colleges' admission decisions. We propose a model of college admissions in which a college disagrees with society on which students should be admitted. We show how the college can use a test-optional policy to reduce its "disagreement cost" with society, regardless of whether this results in a preferred student pool. We discuss which students either benefit from or are harmed by a test-optional policy. In an application, we study how a ban on using race in admissions may result in more colleges going test optional or test blind.
... For instance, in the finance Ph.D. job market, placement services occur at two annual conferences: the Financial Management Association (FMA) meetings in October and the American Finance Association (AFA) meetings in January. Empirical evidence (Volkov, Chira, and Premti, 2016) reveals that top-tier candidates frequently bypass the FMA and secure positions at the AFA, leaving the FMA dominated by lower-quintile candidates. 1 A similar trend appears in U.S. college admissions, where students admitted during early decision rounds tend to have lower SAT scores, class ranks, and extracurricular achievements compared to those admitted in regular decision rounds (Avery and Levin, 2010). ...
Appointments occur sequentially in various many-to-one matching markets such as college admissions and entry-level professional labor markets in the US. Although literature rations early matchings with a competition argument---that is, institutions compete to hire better agents early on---early matchings in some markets (e.g. job market for Finance Ph.D. candidates) show inferior quality. This paper introduces a suitable notion of dynamic group stability and shows that institutions can rationally benefit from committing to match worse early on. Such a commitment lowers the competition for better agents in the subsequent market.
... Finally, my work relates to literature in the field of economics of HE. While previous work has focused on different aspects of admission to HE, such as the role of student portfolios, admission tuition, or college choice and selectivity (e.g., Epple et al., 2006;Avery and Levin, 2010;Avery et al., 2012;Hoxby et al., 2013), my paper focuses on one novel aspect of the admission process to HE -the choice of the examination structure, namely how specific should be the admission exams. Even under the assumption that some skills have no direct influence on student performance, and thus evaluating them may distract from learning more productive skills, I prove that the best way for the university to resolve the resulting trade-off is to have a non-zero weight on the general skill test. ...
This thesis focus on the choice of university admission requirements. The first chapter studies which admission requirements to Higher Education are better predictors of students' success. More specifically, I explore the differences in national high-stake exams and teacher scores used by Economics and Management degrees. I find that the teacher scores are a stronger predictor of students' performance at university. In the second chapter, I study whether universities should select their students only using specialised subject-specific tests, or on the basis of a broader set of skills and knowledge. The empirical analysis is guided by a theoretical framework. The theoretical model shows that although broader skills are not improving graduates' outcomes in the labour market, the university chooses to use them as a criterion for selection alongside the mastery of more subject-specific tools. This is so because broader skills allow the university to select candidates who are on average abler. I test the model on a large administrative dataset of Portuguese students. My central finding is that, on average, universities with less specialised admission policies admit a pool of students who obtain a higher final GPA.
... Similarly, signaling is applied in the context of college admissions (e.g. Avery, Fairbanks, & Zeckhauser, 2004;Avery & Levin, 2010). Waldman (1984) takes a slightly different angle and finds that companies tend to keep workers in jobs below their true ability to signal to the market that the employees are not worth trying to headhunt them. ...
Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) is an established vehicle for collaboration among a corporation and start-ups. Through equity investments paired with access to resources, capabilities and expert networks, corporations aim at supporting start-up development. Although the efficacy of CVCs is broadly discussed in literature, CVCs are often treated as uniform vehicles. Little is known about the impact of a CVC’s strategic direction and organizational design on the performance of start-ups. Moreover, Corporate Accelerator (CA) is a rather new form of corporate start-up engagement. Due to its newness limited research is available and literature urges – among others – to compare CA with more established form of corporate start-up support, especially CVC. Following these identified research gaps the dissertation consists of two empirical sections. In the first section, the effect of a CVCs organization and strategic direction on start-up performance is evaluated. Using a hand-collected unique data-set of 210 start-ups under the management of 21 German CVCs, the study finds that organization of a CVC impacts the financial and strategic performance in multiple ways. Distinct hypotheses on portfolio size, concentration and fit, previous experience and CVC leadership are developed and tested empirically. The results show that CVC strategy and organization matter for start-up performance, however, disparate effects are observable for financial and strategic performance. Large portfolios enhance the performance of start-ups under CVC management, whereas both portfolio concentration and industry fit have a negative relationship with start-up performance. Moreover, more established CVCs support financial, yet impede strategic start-up performance. Lastly, it is detected that Previous industry experience of CVC personnel leads to financial start-up performance, whereas previous founder experience of CVC personnel strengthens strategic start-up performance. The second section aims at empirically reflecting the differences between CVC and CA, the start-ups under management and performance implications. The work is based on a novel multi-level and hand-collected dataset on financial and strategic performance covering 21 German CVCs with 210 start-ups and 15 German CAs with 132 start-ups. The results show that CVC and CA differ. CVCs tend to support older and further developed start-ups that operate more frequently in strategic proximity to the corporate parent, whereas CAs collaborate with younger and less mature start-ups across varying industries. In addition, CVCs stimulate start-up performance more than CAs do, even when matching CVC- and CA-managed start-ups based on their size and stage of development All in all, the work adds to literature in multiple ways as understanding of CVCs is deepened through a grounding in economic theories, uncovering of white spots determination of performance implications of a CVC’s strategic direction and organizational design and differentiation from a similar corporate venturing form, Corporate Accelerator. The work empirically supports that a differentiation of financial and strategic performance is required in corporate venturing research and sheds light on how CVCs should be organized to foster start-up performance. Moreover, it offers an enhanced understanding of CVC through an empirical comparison with the new phenomenon of CAs. Lastly, empirical evidence on CVC and CA is given based on a German dataset, in contrast to the majority of studies, being based on US data.
... In the United States, selective colleges use a decentralized admissions system called early decision in which students can receive admissions before the general admission period. In this system, each student is allowed to apply to one college and commits to attend whenever he receives an admission (Avery and Levin 2010). In practice, each application includes a document signed by the school board, each student gets at most one. ...
This paper studies a decentralized college admissions game with single application motivated by college admissions in many countries such as Japan, Russia, South Korea and United States. Students sequentially apply to colleges, one application for each student, and commit to attend whenever they are admitted. We introduce a natural equilibrium refinement and describe the equilibrium behavior. It is a simple strategy that consists of running the well-known student-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm (DA) for modified preferences. Students and colleges are divided along the outcome of DA. Students find the outcome of every equilibrium at least as good as the outcome of DA, and colleges find the outcome of DA at least as good as the outcome of every equilibrium.
... Under the assumption that students face negligible application costs, submitting applications to all colleges is the dominant strategy. The reason is that students do not know how colleges evaluate their academic ability or personal essays (Avery and Levin, 2010;Che and Koh, 2016). Then, agents simultaneously decide which arms to pull based on the arm's attributes. ...
We study two-sided decentralized matching markets in which participants have uncertain preferences. We present a statistical model to learn the preferences. The model incorporates uncertain state and the participants' competition on one side of the market. We derive an optimal strategy that maximizes the agent's expected payoff and calibrate the uncertain state by taking the opportunity costs into account. We discuss the sense in which the matching derived from the proposed strategy has a stability property. We also prove a fairness property that asserts that there exists no justified envy according to the proposed strategy. We provide numerical results to demonstrate the improved payoff, stability and fairness, compared to alternative methods.
... The informational environment in our model implies students face no uncertainty in admissions, so we can abstract from an application-admission game with incomplete information. Avery and Levin (2010), Chade, Lewis, and Smith (2014) and Fu (2014) provide a detailed analysis of these issues. Our model also abstracts from choices made by students once they enter college. ...
We estimate an equilibrium model of private and state college competition that generates realistic pricing patterns for private colleges using a large national data set from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Our analysis distinguishes between tuition variation that reflects efficient pricing to students who generate beneficial peer externalities and variation that reflects arguably inefficient exercise of market power. Our findings indicate substantial exercise of market power and, importantly, sizable variation in this power along the college quality hierarchy and among students with different characteristics. Finally, we conduct policy analysis to examine the consequences of increased availability of quality public colleges in a state.
... And advanced course programs , such as advanced placement ® (AP ® ) and dual credit/dual enrollment (DE) are considered as a useful tool to promote both access to selective institution and success in college completion. Admission rates to selective institutions have dropped dramatically (Avery & Levin, 2010). Advanced course taking, as a mark of distinction, can provide an admission advantage at selective institutions (Santoli, 2002;Duffett & Farkas, 2009;Duta & Iannelli, 2018). ...
... And advanced course programs , such as advanced placement ® (AP ® ) and dual credit/dual enrollment (DE) are considered as a useful tool to promote both access to selective institution and success in college completion. Admission rates to selective institutions have dropped dramatically (Avery & Levin, 2010). Advanced course taking, as a mark of distinction, can provide an admission advantage at selective institutions (Santoli, 2002;Duffett & Farkas, 2009;Duta & Iannelli, 2018). ...
Pure Tone Audiometry (PTA) is an essential investigation used in evaluating the degree and the character of hearing loss. However, due to busy clinic time and overflow of patients, the PTA teaching is not optimized during clinical sessions. Accordingly, the students’ experience of PTA is not optimized. To overcome this problem, the researchers encouraged the students to use the smartphone’s application (APPs) that simulate PTA to support the teaching and learning process of audiology. Fifty-seven medical students in their fourth-year in University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) contributed to this study. They used that APPs to screen the hearing status in a random sample of a population (N = 277) in the workplace. The students managed to analyze PTA. A third of students performed the tests correctly. APPs showed high effectiveness as a diagnostic tool which supported their skills in solving the clinical problem. They managed to confirm the diagnosis of presbycusis (hearing impairment due to aging) in patients aged 60 and above. APPs as a screening tool supported students’ skills in performing PTA testing (learning by doing). They identified abnormal PTA in 51.9% among those cases who did not have any complaint of hearing loss. The APPs results confirmed the complaint of the hearing loss in 42.6 % of cases. APPs was also helpful in identifying non-manifested conditions in 40.4% of cases. The availability and reliability of smartphone’s APPs can overcome the problems of limited exposures and the expensive simulators. Eventually, it will enhance the medical students’ competency.
Applicants to schools, colleges, and jobs hedge by applying to a broad range of options, including reaches, matches, and safeties. We develop a simultaneous-search framework that rationalizes this practice. In this framework, the admissions process is correlated across schools so that if an applicant is rejected by one school, she is more likely to be rejected by more selective schools. We find that an applicant then optimally targets both safeties and reaches. We characterize how the optimal portfolio varies with the applicant’s beliefs, risk attitudes, and application costs and offer an algorithm that delivers the optimal portfolio in polynomial time. (JEL D81, D83, D91, I23)
How do firms compete when all firms in an industry set identical prices? Using Nielsen data on India's biscuit manufacturers, we document productivity‐based competition on nonprice strategies under industry‐wide uniform pricing. Products with one standard deviation higher quantity‐based productivity contain, on average, 13% more quantity per pack for the same price. Productivity also positively correlates with promotions on pack size, availability, and variety. A higher price (per pack size) sensitivity in rural markets combined with industry‐wide uniform pricing imposes a greater burden on rural consumers. Additional analyses show that firms can reduce this burden by selling different pack sizes in urban and rural areas.
This paper considers a model of centralized college admission under the Boston mechanism where students may have uncertainty about their priorities. Students have homogeneous ordinal preferences over colleges, but their preference intensities vary, and the exam scores determine their priorities. In equilibrium, student application strategies take a cutoff form. The strategies depend on their exam scores under post‐score submissions, on preference intensities under pre‐exam submissions, and on both preference intensities and signals about their exam scores under pre‐score submissions. Given these equilibrium strategies, students are better off under pre‐exam and pre‐score submissions than post‐score submissions. When students with the same preference intensities and exam scores receive signals of different qualities, those with bad signals could be hurt by those with good signals.
Objective:
To evaluate influencing factors of preference signaling (PS) among urology residency applicants during the 2022 AUA Match.
Methods:
We emailed an anonymous, de-identified questionnaire survey to applicants to our institution for the 2022 AUA Match. The main question asked to applicants was "What factor(s) went into your decision to send 'Program X' a preference signal?" Certain questions allowed the selection of multiple options, and applicants were further asked to specify these by selecting a single most important option. Descriptive statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS software.
Results:
Out of 601 registrants to the AUA match, 324 individuals applied to our institution and therefore received a survey; 77 responded for a 24% response rate. A total of 383 PS were sent by the 77 applicants. Overall, 73% and 49% of the total 383 PS had program location and reputation, respectively, selected as an influencing factor. More than one influencing factor was considered in 73% of PS selections, with program location (45%) considered the most important factor. In relation to applicant competitiveness, 35% of PS were sent to perceived "target" programs, 31% to "reach" programs, and 8% to "safety" programs. Among respondents who matched, 75% matched at a home, away, or signaled program.
Conclusion:
Program location appears to be the most influential factor in sending a program a PS. Programs were also signaled based on applicant's perception of their own competitiveness. PS appears to have a possible beneficial impact on obtaining interviews and successfully matching.
In this paper, we address whether the provision of contextual information about where students live and learn has the potential to expand postsecondary opportunities to students from disadvantaged neighborhoods and high schools. To examine this question, we describe the results of field experiments with admissions officers working in eight universities who re-read real applications from previous admissions cycles with a dashboard of contextual data about the applicant’s neighborhood and high school. In this low-stakes context, admissions officers from institutions utilizing holistic admissions practices were more likely to recommend admitting low-SES applicants when provided with contextual data. The experiment also primed admissions readers to treat students from highly disadvantaged high school and neighborhood contexts more favorably relative to the results of the high-stakes official read, even when the dashboard was not shown to study participants. The results of this experiment suggest that contextualized data can improve equity in admissions, but fidelity to holistic admissions practices is crucial.
College admissions in the United States are decentralized, creating frictions that limit student choice. We study the Common Application (CA) platform, under which students submit a single application to member schools, potentially reducing frictions and increasing student choice. The CA increases the number of applications received by schools, reflecting a reduction in frictions, and reduces the yield on accepted students, reflecting increased choice. The CA increases out-of-state enrollment, especially from other CA states, consistent with network effects. Entry into the CA changes the composition of students, with evidence of more racial diversity and more high-income students and imprecise evidence of increases in SAT scores. (JEL I23, I28)
Many prominent social scientists have advocated for random-draw lotteries as a solution to the “problem” of elite college admissions. They argue that lotteries will be fair, equitable, eliminate corruption, reduce student anxiety, restore democratic ideals, and end debates over race-conscious admissions. In response, we simulate potential lottery effects on student enrollment by race, gender, and income, using robust simulation methods and multiple minimum thresholds for grades and standardized tests. In the overwhelming majority of lottery simulations, the proportions of low-income students and students of color drop precipitously. With a GPA minimum, we find the proportion of men could drop as low as one third. Admissions lotteries with minimum bars for GPA and/or standardized tests do not appear to produce more equitable outcomes.
We study multi-period college admission problems where, at each period, a matching is computed and students have the option to either finalize their matches or participate in the next period. Students participating in an additional run of the matching mechanism can submit a new rank order list to the matching clearinghouse. Such gradual matching systems can adequately account for an additional source of heterogeneity among participants, like withdrawals. We identify the conditions under which such systems first ensure that participating in additional runs of the matching mechanism is safe for participants (in the sense that they can secure the spot they obtained at the previous round) and second yield to stable matchings (with a stability concept adapted to this environment). We use our results to evaluate the former French college admission system, where students could finalize their matches at different dates up to two months ahead the end of the admission campaign.
Decisions agents make before and after matching can be strategically linked through the match. We demonstrate this linkage in a game where universities either require students to commit to majors before matriculating or allow students to pick majors during their studies. The interaction between “matching forces” (competition for higher quality students) and “principal-agent forces” (moral hazard and adverse selection) leads to two equilibria that mirror the admissions systems in the US and England. With monetary transfers, our model provides insights into athletic scholarships. Payment caps that restrict transfers to potential athletes who decide not to play sports can maximize welfare.
This paper develops a tractable theoretical framework for the Top Trading Cycles (TTC) mechanism for school choice that allows quantifying welfare and optimizing policy decisions. We compute welfare for TTC and Deferred Acceptance (DA) under different priority structures, and find that the choice of priorities can have larger welfare implications than the choice of mechanism. We solve for the welfare-maximizing distributions of school quality for parametrized economies, and find that optimal investment decisions can be very different under TTC and DA.
Our framework relies on a novel characterization of the TTC assignment in terms of a cutoff for each pair of schools. These cutoffs parallel prices in competitive equilibrium, with students’ priorities serving the role of endowments. We show that these cutoffs can be computed directly from the distribution of preferences and priorities in a continuum model, and derive closed-form solutions and comparative statics for parameterized settings. The TTC cutoffs clarify the role of priorities in determining the TTC assignment, but also demonstrate that TTC is more complicated than DA.
Equity and diversity issues are becoming more important in higher education and colleges are adopting various policies to address them. I am going to focus on college admissions and discuss two policies that are most commonly used in practice: affirmative action and need/merit-based financial aid. Here are what we have come up with so far and what can be done in the future.
A multiperiod, theoretical model characterizes the relationship between a publication that ranks universities and prospective students who might use this ranking to decide which university to attend. The published ranking offers information about the universities’ objective quality but also affects their prestige, which may increase student utility. This prestige effect gives the commercial publication incentive to act contrary to the best interest of the students. If a ranking created with the commonly used attribute-and-aggregate methodology creates prestige, then to maximize profit the publication needs to (1) choose attribute score weights that do not match student preferences and (2) alter those attribute score weights over time, even in the absence of changes to student preferences and/or education technology. Without a prestige effect, the publication should choose attribute score weights that match student preferences. This model also defines a student-optimal ranking methodology that maximizes the sum of the students’ utilities. The results offer insights for prospective students who use existing rankings to choose a university, as well as which ranking designs would better align with students’ preferences.
We study a college admissions problem in which colleges accept students by ranking students’ efforts in entrance exams. Students’ ability levels affect the cost of their efforts. We solve and compare equilibria of “centralized college admissions” (CCA) where students apply to all colleges and “decentralized college admissions” (DCA) where students only apply to one college. We show that lower ability students prefer DCA whereas higher ability students prefer CCA. Many predictions of the theory are supported by a lab experiment designed to test the theory, yet we find a number of differences that render DCA less attractive than CCA compared to the equilibrium benchmark.
A decision maker wishes to fill a vacancy with a fixed wage. Candidates who are more valuable to the decision maker are less likely to be available. The candidates suffer a disutility from filling the position when they are ranked low on the decision maker's preference list. However, the decision maker's preferences are his private information. Therefore, the candidates infer the decision maker's preference list from information revealed by the number of failed offers. We explore the adverse effect of the social component in the candidates’ preferences on the decision maker's ability to recruit a suitable candidate.
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We consider a college admissions problem with uncertainty. We realistically assume that (i) students' college application choices are nontrivial because applications are costly, (ii) college rankings of students are noisy and thus uncertain at the time of application, and (iii) matching between colleges and students takes place in a decentralized setting. We analyze a general equilibrium model where two ranked colleges set admissions standards for student quality signals, and students, knowing their types, decide where to apply to. We show that the optimal student application portfolio need not be monotone in types, and we construct a robust example to show that this can lead to a failure of assortative matching in equilibrium. More importantly, we prove that a unique equilibrium with assortive matching exists provided application costs are small and the lower-ranked college has sufficiently high capacity. We also provide equilibrium comparative static results with respect to college capacities and application costs. We apply the model to the question of race-based admissions policies
Over the past few decades, the average college has not become more selective: the reverse is true, though not dramatically. People who believe that college selectivity is increasing may be extrapolating from the experience of a small number of colleges such as members of the Ivy League, Stanford, Duke, and so on. These colleges have experienced rising selectivity, but their experience turns out to be the exception rather than the rule. Only the top 10 percent of colleges are substantially more selective now than they were in 1962. Moreover, at least 50 percent of colleges are substantially less selective now than they were in 1962. To understand changing selectivity, we must focus on how the market for college education has re-sorted students among schools as the costs of distance and information have fallen. In the past, students' choices were very sensitive to the distance of a college from their home, but today, students, especially high-aptitude students, are far more sensitive to a college's resources and student body. It is the consequent re-sorting of students among colleges that has, at once, caused selectivity to rise in a small number of colleges while simultaneously causing it to fall in other colleges. This has had profound implications for colleges' resources, tuition, and subsidies for students. I demonstrate that the stakes associated with choosing a college are greater today than they were four decades ago because very selective colleges are offering very large per-student resources and per-student subsidies, enabling admitted students to make massive human capital investments.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors compete in a game they'll play only once, whose rules they do not fully understand, yet whose consequences are enormous. The game is college admissions, and applying early to an elite school is one way to win. But the early admissions process is enigmatic and flawed. It can easily lead students toward hasty or misinformed decisions.
This book--based on the careful examination of more than 500,000 college applications to fourteen elite colleges, and hundreds of interviews with students, counselors, and admissions officers--provides an extraordinarily thorough analysis of early admissions. In clear language it details the advantages and pitfalls of applying early as it provides a map for students and parents to navigate the process. Unlike college admissions guides, The Early Admissions Game reveals the realities of early applications, how they work and what effects they have. The authors frankly assess early applications. Applying early is not for everyone, but it will improve--sometimes double, even triple--the chances of being admitted to a prestigious college.
An early decision program can greatly enhance a college's reputation by skewing statistics, such as selectivity, average SAT scores, or percentage of admitted applicants who matriculate. But these gains come at the expense of distorting applicants' decisions and providing disparate treatment of students who apply early and regular admissions. The system, in short, is unfair, and the authors make recommendations for improvement.
The Early Admissions Game is sure to be the definitive work on the subject. It is must reading for admissions officers, guidance counselors, and high school seniors and their parents.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Joining the Game
1. The History of Early Admissions
2. The State of the Game
3. Martian Blackjack: What Do Applicants Understand about Early Admissions?
4. The Innocents Abroad: The Admissions Voyage
5. The Truth about Early Applications
6. The Game Revealed: Strategies of Colleges, Counselors, and Applicants
7. Advice to Applicants
Conclusion: The Essence of the Game and Some Possible Reforms
Appendix A: Median SAT-1 Scores and Early Application Programs at Various Colleges
Appendix B: Data Sources
Appendix C: Interview Formats
Acknowledgments
Tables and Figures
Index
Reviews of this book:
Applying to an elite college through an early-admissions program can improve students' chances of getting in by as much as 50 percent over their odds during the regular admissions cycle, a difference that is the equivalent of scoring 100 points higher on the SAT...Based on an analysis of admission data at top colleges, as well as interviews with over 400 college freshmen [ The Early Admissions Game ] challenges the official line of college admissions deans, who have long held that applying early does not give prospective students an advantage over regular applicants. But the research confirms what many high-school counselors already suspected, and it is likely to fuel debate over whether early-admissions programs favor wealthy and well-connected students and should be eliminated or reformed.
--Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education
Reviews of this book:
[This] important contribution to the college-admissions process should reduce the general anxiety that pervades today's transition to college and, in particular, help level the playing field for students who lack access to adequate college counseling. The book may also prompt needed reform of contemporary admissions practices...The authors' goal...deserves acclaim for helping inner-city and rural students and those in other understaffed districts to pursue admission on a much more even footing...There is a wealth of information in this well-organized, clearly-written book which will enable students to make better college choices.
--William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard Magazine
Reviews of this book:
Readers seeking solid information about elite colleges will find The Early Admissions Game refreshingly frank. Other readers concerned about restoring some equity to the process will also appreciate the book's generosity of spirit and suggestions for reform. The authors present a devastating portrait of elite college admissions--and early admissions in particular--as an elaborate and complicated "game"...[where the winners] tend to be privileged students who have access to highly skilled counselors with information pipelines to elite college admissions offices.
--Peter Sacks, The Nation
Reviews of this book:
Avery and his colleagues describe college admissions as a casino on Mars: you have to guess the rules of the game you are playing, and the rules can change while you are playing it...[Their chief finding] is that applying early significantly increases the chances of acceptance...Colleges argue that the early-admissions pool is stronger than the regular pool...[but the authors] dispute that claim... The Early Admissions Game is intended as an expos̮̩, for high-school students and their parents, of the realities of college admissions, but it is also a protest against the practice of early admissions. The authors believe that these programs benefit privileged students...[and] cheat disadvantaged students.
--Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Researching and applying to colleges is a demanding, confusing, and stressful time for both students and parents. This book provides context and guidance to admissions professionals, to college counselors, and to families as they confront today's highly competitive, and often controversial, college admissions scene. It offers an insightful and authoritative explanation of the strategic choices that await those seeking to enroll at the nation's leading colleges and universities. It can help a student decide whether, when and why to apply early. Most important, it can give applicants the confidence to focus less on the "game" and more on the truly critical factors in choosing a college: the level of intellectual challenge and vitality in the curriculum, the strength and accessibility of the faculty, and the student's individual sense of fit with a particular campus environment and culture.
--Nancy Vickers, President, Bryn Mawr College
The Early Admissions Game explains clearly and comprehensively the many forces that have made early applications a prominent - and much misunderstood - feature in the high-pressure arena of college admissions. The authors clear away the hype and speculation, then offer refreshingly sane, sensible guidance that will greatly help students make intelligent decisions about their college applications.
--William D. Wharton, Headmaster, Commonwealth School, Boston
Avery, Fairbanks, and Zeckhauser offer clear and compelling evidence that the college admissions process needs repair. Their findings have already inspired steps toward reform.
--Richard Levin, President, Yale University
This is an exceptionally interesting and intelligent book-one with real 'news' to report. The authors present their important findings with great clarity. I expect that this volume will have a significant and favorable impact on policy discussion of early admission programs at elite colleges.
--Michael McPherson, President, Macalester College
Anyone involved in the college admissions process -- students and parents, counselors and admissions officers, top officials at high schools and at colleges -- should read this important book. It will help them achieve their objectives. The authors also present a number of suggestions for reforms in the admissions system that are worthy of debate across American higher education.
--Lawrence H. Summers, President, Harvard University
This article introduces a new model of early contracting. Employers who have private information about the applicant's ability worry that applicants who accept their offer are precisely those who were not offered other jobs. To avoid this winner's curse, employers anticipate the time of contracting. The model is developed in the context of university admissions, and is shown to be consistent with several stylized facts in that "market." We show that, in contrast to received wisdom, allocative efficiency may be improved by the presence of early contracting. Copyright © (2009) by the Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.
Early application programs have turned the college admissions process into a highly strategic arena. It is widely believed, but seldom acknowledged by colleges, that early applicants are favored in admissions decisions. This report is a brief summary of a book that will be published by Harvard University Press. We analyze admission records from 14 highly selective colleges, finding that early applicants are significantly more likely to be admitted than are regular applicants with similar qualifications. Our interviews with college students and high school counselors demonstrate a wide range of knowledge about the nature of early applications.
Preferences and Signaling in a Matching Market
- Christopher Avery
Avery, Christopher, " Preferences and Signaling in a Matching Market, " Havard University
Working Paper, 2008.