Working Paper: NBER ID: w18721
Authors: Jason Fletcher; Adalbert Mayer
Abstract: The Texas 10% law states that students who graduated among the top 10% of their high school class are guaranteed admission to public universities in Texas. We estimate the causal effects of this admissions guarantee on a sequence of connected decisions: students' application behavior, admission decisions by the university, students' enrollment choices conditional on admission; as well as the resulting college achievement. We identify these effects by comparing students just above and just below the top 10% rank cutoff. While this design is in the spirit of a regression discontinuity, we note important differences in approach and interpretation. We find that students react to incentives created by the admissions guarantee - for example, by reducing applications to competing private universities. The results also suggest that the effects of the admissions guarantee depend on the university and the type of students it attracts, and that the law is binding and alters the decisions of the admissions committees. We find little evidence that the law increases diversity or leads to meaningful mismatch for the marginal student admitted.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: I21; I23; I28
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Texas 10 law (K16) | increase applications to flagship universities (I23) |
| Texas 10 law (K16) | change in composition of admitted students (D29) |
| Texas 10 law (K16) | no significant increases in diversity among enrolled students (I24) |
| Texas 10 law (K16) | no systematic mismatch (C52) |