As in many school districts around the world, prospective high-school students in Ghana are assigned to schools through a centralized system. Using administrative data on applications, we report that virtually all students adopt a weakly dominated strategy, and matching outcomes show that...

We study a college admissions problem in which colleges accept students by ranking students’ efforts in entrance exams. Students’ ability levels affect the cost of their efforts. We solve and compare the equilibria of “centralized college admissions” (CCA) where students apply to all...