Getting In and Getting Through: Ex Ante Beliefs and Counterfactual Outcomes in Centralized College Admissions

Pamela Giustinelli () and Edwin Leuven ()
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Pamela Giustinelli: University of Padova
Edwin Leuven: University of Oslo

No 2026-002, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: We study belief accuracy in a centralized higher-education admissions system using Norwegian data that combine a large pre-admission expectations survey with administrative records on offers, enrollment, and completion. Program-specific cutoffs provide a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that identifies objective counterfactual outcomes at the admission margin and allows direct comparison with subjective, state-contingent beliefs (first-choice access versus the relevant second-choice offer state). We find that enrollment forecast errors are driven mainly by mistaken beliefs about offer probabilities, while beliefs about enrollment conditional on an offer are comparatively accurate. For completion, the dominant error is persistence optimism: applicants substantially overestimate completion conditional on enrollment under both access states. Applicants also overstate first-minus-second returns for both enrollment and completion. These errors are economically meaningful for choices: in a partial-equilibrium counterfactual exercise, correcting beliefs implies large declines in the predicted probability of keeping the currently ranked first choice on top.

Keywords: subjective probabilities; objective ex post returns; returns to enrollment; higher education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C83 D84 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des
Note: FI
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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Giusti ... outcomes-college.pdf First version March, 2026 (application/pdf)

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