A National‐Level Informational Experiment to Promote Enrollment in Selective Colleges

Abstract

Prior research finds that low‐income students are less likely to apply to and enroll in four‐year colleges or more selective colleges, even after controlling for academic preparation and other background characteristics. The College Board sought to reduce barriers in the college application process through a targeted campaign of brochures and e‐mails. These materials were sent to students two to three times between the end of eleventh grade and the middle of twelfth grade, and aimed to provide an impetus to start the college search process, minimize the costs of aggregating data, and encourage a broader college application portfolio. Some students were offered additional encouragements, such as text message reminders or college application fee waivers. In a randomized control trial with 785,000 low‐ and middle‐income students in the top 50 percent of the PSAT and SAT distributions, we find no changes in college enrollment patterns.

Margins that Matter: Exploring the Association Between Academic Match and Bachelor’s Degree Completion Over Time

“…Researchers and practitioners have worked to address this problem by developing programs and interventions to reduce the prevalence of undermatch (see Dynarski et al, 2018;Gurantz et al, 2020;Hoxby & Turner, 2013;Stephan & Rosenbaum, 2013). Thanks in part to these efforts, and to broader trends in U.S. higher education (Hoxby, 2009), rates of undermatch have declined over time (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011;Smith et al, 2013).…”

The Fast Track to New Skills: Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean

“…Interventions vary in what information they provide (such as availability and characteristics of programs), when they provide it (how far in advance before high school graduation), and how (whether in a light-or high-touch fashion). Light-touch interventions mail information to students(Hoxby and Turner 2013;Gurantz et al 2021;Bergman, Denning, and Manoli 2019;Hyman 2020), nudge them(Castleman, Deutschlander, and Lohner 2020;Oreopoulos and Petronijevic 2019), or post information on a website (as is the case of government information provision, studied bySmith 2018 andBaker 2020). In contrast, high-touch interventions engage the student directly and intensively, for instance through repeated counseling sessions(Bettinger and Baker 2014; Oreopolous and Ford 2019;Bettinger and Evans 2019;Mulhern 2020).…”

Student Loan Nudges: Experimental Evidence on Borrowing and Educational Attainment

“…Finally, we contribute to a large literature on the importance of "nudges" and other choice architecture. 2 Nudges affect financial choices in a variety of settings (e.g., Thaler and Benartzi 2004;Duflo, Kremer, and Robinson 2011;Allcott and Rogers 2014). Within the context of postsecondary education, attainment effects have been found for reductions in already-small costs of college applications (Pallais 2015), providing information to high-achieving, low-income students (Hoxby and Turner 2015), sending text messages about obtaining financial aid and advancing in college Page 2015, 2016), and giving unemployed workers information about financial aid and the return to college (Barr and Turner 2015).…”