Limiting Applications in College Admissions and Evidence from Conflicting Exam Dates

Wei-Cheng Chen and Yi-Cheng Kao

Journal of Human Capital, 2023, vol. 17, issue 3, 434 - 461

Abstract: We present a college admissions problem in which colleges may benefit from limiting the number of applications; specifically, a strategy of administering their entrance exams on the same date. Our model shows that a lower-ranked but still-selective college can attract preferred students through this strategy. We test the model by using the entrance exams of graduate schools in Taiwan and find that student quality could be improved when colleges allow their departments to determine whether to use the strategy. Moreover, a department that has a small difference in prestige between it and the most prestigious department will tend to use the strategy to limit the number of applications.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/724567 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/724567 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jhucap:doi:10.1086/724567

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Human Capital from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().