The merit-vs-diversity balance in university-admissions remains a controversial issue. Statistical analysis of these problems is jeopardized by applicant characteristics observed by admission-officers but unobserved by researchers. Using administrative microdata from the two-stage Cambridge...

High-profile universities often face public criticism for undermining academic merit and promoting social elitism or engineering through their admissions-process. Popular statistical tests for detecting such biases, based on the significance of socioeconomic characteristics on admission...