How do transparent admission standards increase the application to college-bound school

Lunch talk with Tamás Keller

Time & Location: November 22nd, 2023, 12-13, Oddi 201

Students require accurate information to navigate the education system. In response to this need, various information campaigns have emerged in different fields of social science, with the goal of providing students with essential details. A growing body of empirical literature suggests that schools’ admission standards may discourage students from applying due to the associated risk of non-admission, which students tend to avoid. This study makes two key contributions to the literature on educational decision-making. Firstly, we examine how the perception of schools’ admission standards influences students’ perceived admission chances, potentially dissuading them from applying. Secondly, we conduct a series of pair-matched, cluster-randomized field experiments, revealing schools’ actual admission standards to qualified students to encourage their application. Our findings indicate that our light-touch treatment led to a small and statistically insignificant main effect. The paper further delves into heterogeneity in the treatment effect and speculates on reasons why pure information campaigns may not be fully effective.