Choosing Differently? College Application Behavior and the Persistence of Educational Advantage

Paul Devereux and Judith Delaney

No 14747, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We use administrative data from Ireland to study differences in college application behavior between students from disadvantaged versus advantaged high schools. Ireland provides an interesting laboratory for this analysis as applicants provide a preference-ordering of college programs (majors) and marginal applications are costless. Also, college admission depends almost completely on grades in the terminal high school examinations. Thus, we can compare the application choices of students who have equal chances of admission to college programs. Conditional on achievement and college opportunities, we find that students from advantaged high schools are more likely to apply to universities and to more selective college programs. They are also more likely to have preferences that cluster by program selectivity rather than by field of study. Our results suggest that, alongside differences in achievement, differences in college application behavior also cause persons from advantaged high schools to be more likely to enroll in selective colleges and enter more selective programs. Importantly, we find that enrollment gaps for equally qualified applicants are smaller than differences in application behavior; the relatively meritocratic centralized admissions system based on achievement undoes much of the effect of the differences in application behavior.

Keywords: College applications; Centralized admissions system; College major choice; Higher education; Educational mismatch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14747 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Choosing differently? College application behavior and the persistence of educational advantage (2020)
Working Paper: Choosing differently? College application behaviour and the persistence of educational advantage (2020)
Working Paper: Choosing Differently? College Application Behavior and the Persistence of Educational Advantage (2020)
Working Paper: Choosing Differently? College Application Behaviour and the Persistence of Educational Advantage (2020)
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:cpr:ceprdp:14747

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14747

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().