Take Two! SAT Retaking and College Enrollment Gaps

Joshua Goodman (), Oded Gurantz and Jonathan Smith

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 115-58

Abstract: Only half of SAT-takers retake the exam, with even lower retake rates among low-income students and underrepresented minority (URM) students. We exploit discontinuous jumps in retake probabilities at multiples of 100, driven by left-digit bias, to estimate retaking's causal effects. Retaking substantially improves SAT scores and increases four-year college enrollment rates, particularly for low-income and URM students. Eliminating disparities in retake rates could close up to 10 percent of the income-based gap and up to 7 percent of the race-based gap in four-year college enrollment rates of high school graduates.

JEL-codes: I21 I23 I24 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Working Paper: Take Two! SAT Retaking and College Enrollment Gaps (2018)
Working Paper: Take Two! SAT Retaking and College Enrollment Gaps (2018)
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DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170503

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