In this paper, I examine the impact of legacy status on admissions decisions at 30 highly selective colleges and universities. Unlike other quantitative studies addressing this topic, I use conditional logistic regression with fixed effects for colleges to draw conclusions about the impact of legacy status on admissions odds. By doing so, I…

This paper estimates the returns to university selectivity in the UK using administrative data on applications and admissions to university, linked to a survey of graduates three and a half years after graduation. It compares students who indicated preferences for, and were conditionally accepted to, the same universities--but who attended…

This paper quantifies the extent of student-college "academic undermatch," which occurs when a student's academic credentials permit them access to a college or university that is more selective than the postsecondary alternative they actually choose. Using a nationally representative dataset, we find that 41 percent of students…

This paper provides an econometric analysis of the matriculation decisions made by students accepted to Williams College, one of the nation's most highly selective colleges and universities. Using data for the Williams classes of 2008 through 2012 to estimate a yield model, we find that--conditional on the student applying to and being accepted by…

This paper exploits discontinuities and randomness in the college admissions in Sweden in 1982, to estimate the economic return to college in the 1990s. At the time, college admissions were highly selective and applicants were ranked with respect to their formal merits. Admissions were given to those ranked higher than some threshold value. At the…

Large literatures have shown important links between the quantity of completed education and health outcomes on one hand and the quality or selectivity of schooling on a host of adult outcomes, such as wages, on the other hand. However, little research attempts to produce evidence of the link between school quality and health. The paper presents…

One's position in an alphabetically sorted list may be important in determining access to over-subscribed public services. Motivated by anecdotal evidence, we investigate the importance of the position in the alphabet of Czech students for their admission chances into over-subscribed schools. Empirical evidence based on the population of students…

In earlier work, the authors found that only 10% of the students at 28 of the nation's most selective private colleges and universities came from families in the bottom 40% of the US family income distribution and that there is a larger share of low-income high-ability students in the national population than in the student bodies of these…

I analyze how elementary and secondary private schools decide which students to admit from their applicant pool using mechanism design theory. The problem for an individual private school of who to admit and how much to charge in tuition, is complicated by the existence of peer-effects: the value students place on attending school is increasing…

In light of the recent bans on affirmative action in higher education, this paper provides new evidence on the effects of alternative admissions policies on the persistence and college completion of minority students. I find that the change from affirmative action to the Top 10% Plan in Texas decreased both retention and graduation rates of…

In an attempt to increase applications from low-income students, some selective 4-year colleges are developing programs to target and attract low-income students. However, relatively little research has looked at factors important in the college application process, and in particular, how these factors differ for low-income students. This paper…

Previous research has established the returns to academic ability in the general labor market, and this paper investigates such returns in the teacher labor market. Using a nationally representative sample of public school teachers, I find that teachers who graduate from the most selective undergraduate institutions have salaries that are between…

This paper assesses the effectiveness of financial aid in promoting the persistence of black and Hispanic students admitted to the most selective colleges and universities in the United States to complete their college education. To explore whether more dollars of aid enhance graduation, the analysis separates two constructs--aid eligibility and…

The strong correlation between having graduated from a selective college and success in the labor market has been robustly observed in many countries. There are two major explanations for this finding. One claims that graduating from a selective college assures success in the labor market in a causal sense due to better education, a better alumni…

To judge whether better-informed consumers of higher education, the families of faculty, make different choices than other similarly endowed consumers, we compare the pattern of colleges chosen by 4742 children of college and university faculty with the pattern chosen by the children of non-faculty families of similar socio-economic status. The…