American Economic Review Vol. 100 No. 5 2010

Early Admissions at Selective Colleges

Christopher Avery¹; Jonathan Levin²

¹ Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. · ² Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.

Abstract

Early admissions are widely used by selective colleges and universities. We identify some basic facts about early admissions policies, including the admissions advantage enjoyed by early applicants and patterns in application behavior, and propose a game-theoretic model that matches these facts. The key feature of the model is that colleges want to admit students who are enthusiastic about attending, and early admissions programs give students an opportunity to signal this enthusiasm.

DOI

10.1257/aer.100.5.2125

Volume

100

Issue

5

Pages

2125-2156

Language

en

Sources

openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

Cite

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