The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 inhibited face-to-face education and constrained exam taking. In many countries worldwide, high-stakes exams happening at the end of the school year determine college admissions. This paper investigates the impact of using historical data of school and...

We investigate the effect of increasing the weight of standardized high-stakes exams at the expense of high school grades for college admissions. Studying a policy change in Spain, we find a negative effect of the reform on female college admission scores, driven by students expected to be at...