Working Paper: NBER ID: w20861
Authors: Caroline Hoxby; Sarah Turner
Abstract: Previous work (Hoxby and Avery 2014) shows that low-income higher achievers tend not to apply to selective colleges despite being extremely likely to be admitted with financial aid so generous that they would pay less than they do to attend the non-selective schools they usually attend. The Expanding College Opportunities project is a randomized controlled trial that provides such students with individualized information about the college application process and colleges' net prices. In other work (Hoxby and Turner 2013), we show that the informational intervention substantially raises students' probability of applying to, being admitted at, enrolling at, and progressing at selective colleges. In this study, we show that the intervention actually changes students' informedness on key topics such as the cost of college, the availability of the curricula and peers they seek, and the different types of colleges available to them. We highlight topics on which the control students, who experienced no intervention, are seriously misinformed.
Keywords: college access; low-income students; high-achieving students; randomized controlled trial; college application process
JEL Codes: I21; I22; I23; I24; I26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| ECO intervention (Q57) | college applications (I23) |
| ECO intervention (Q57) | likelihood of applying to selective colleges (I23) |
| ECO intervention (Q57) | college admissions (I23) |
| ECO intervention (Q57) | likelihood of being admitted by a peer college (I23) |
| ECO intervention (Q57) | college enrollments (I23) |
| ECO intervention (Q57) | graduation rates (I23) |
| ECO intervention (Q57) | instructional spending (H52) |
| ECO intervention (Q57) | students' knowledge about net prices and college attributes (D29) |
| students' knowledge about net prices and college attributes (D29) | informed decisions (D87) |