Yes, You Can! Effects of Transparent Admission Standards on High School Track Choice: A Randomized Field Experiment

Tamás Keller (), Károly Takács and Felix Elwert
Additional contact information
Károly Takács: The Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS), Linköping University Computational Social Science - Research Center for Educational and Network Studies, Centre for Social Sciences
Felix Elwert: Department of Sociology & Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

No 2125, CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

Abstract: High school track choice determines college access in many countries. We hypothesize that some qualified students avoid the college-bound track simply because they overestimate admission requirements. To test this hypothesis, we designed a randomized field experiment that communicated the admission standards of local secondary schools on the academic track to students in Hungary before the application deadline. We targeted the subset of students (“seeds”) who occupied the most central position in the classroom-social networks, aiming to detect both direct effects on the track choice of targeted seeds and spillover effects on their untreated peers. We found neither a direct effect nor a spillover effect on students’ applications or admissions on average. Further analyses, however, revealed theoretically plausible heterogeneity in the direct causal effect of the intervention on the track choice of targeted seeds. Providing information about admission standards increased applications and admissions to secondary schools on the academic track among seeds who had a pre-existing interest in the academic track but were unsure of their chances of admission. This demonstrates that publicizing admissions standards can set students on a more ambitious educational trajectory. We discuss implications for theory and policy.

Keywords: High school track choice; randomized field experiment; educational aspirations; spillover effect; Hungary. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D91 I20 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://kti.krtk.hu/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CERSIEWP202125.pdf (application/pdf)

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:has:discpr:2125

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nora Horvath ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).