Do College Admissions Criteria Matter? Evidence from Discretionary vs. Grade-Based Admission Policies

Rais Kamis, Jessica Pan () and Kelvin Seah
Additional contact information
Rais Kamis: National University of Singapore
Jessica Pan: National University of Singapore

No 15748, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines the implications of college admissions criteria on students' academic and non-academic performance in university and their labor market outcomes. We exploit a unique feature of the admissions system at a large university that has two admission tracks – a regular admission track where admission is based exclusively on academic performance and a discretionary admission (DA) track where applicants can instead gain admission on the basis of demonstrated non-academic qualities. Comparing students admitted through each track, we find that DA students fare similarly in terms of academic performance in university as marginal students admitted through the regular route. However, they are significantly more likely to be involved in optional academic and non-academic college activities and earn substantially higher labor market earnings up to three years after graduation. These results are not driven by the DA process differentially selecting students on the basis of family background or unobserved academic ability.

Keywords: non-academic skills; higher education; college selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lma and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Economics of Education Review, 2023, 92, 102347

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15748.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do college admissions criteria matter? Evidence from discretionary vs. grade-based admission policies (2023)
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:iza:izadps:dp15748

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().