Tracing the Effects of Guaranteed Admission through the College Process: Evidence from a Policy Discontinuity in the Texas 10% Plan

Jason Fletcher and Adalbert Mayer ()

No 18721, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The Texas 10% law states that students who graduated among the top 10% of their high school class are guaranteed admission to public universities in Texas. We estimate the causal effects of this admissions guarantee on a sequence of connected decisions: students' application behavior, admission decisions by the university, students' enrollment choices conditional on admission; as well as the resulting college achievement. We identify these effects by comparing students just above and just below the top 10% rank cutoff. While this design is in the spirit of a regression discontinuity, we note important differences in approach and interpretation. We find that students react to incentives created by the admissions guarantee - for example, by reducing applications to competing private universities. The results also suggest that the effects of the admissions guarantee depend on the university and the type of students it attracts, and that the law is binding and alters the decisions of the admissions committees. We find little evidence that the law increases diversity or leads to meaningful mismatch for the marginal student admitted.

JEL-codes: I21 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Published as Jason M. Fletcher & Adalbert Mayer, 2014. "Tracing The Effects Of Guaranteed Admission Through The College Process: Evidence From A Policy Discontinuity In The Texas 10% Plan," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 32(1), pages 169-186, 01.

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Journal Article: TRACING THE EFFECTS OF GUARANTEED ADMISSION THROUGH THE COLLEGE PROCESS: EVIDENCE FROM A POLICY DISCONTINUITY IN THE TEXAS 10% PLAN (2014)
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