How do rankings affect demand? This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students' application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main findings. First, we identify a causal...

Research has shown that attending a relatively selective four-year college over a less selective alternative is positively related to bachelor's degree completion. This paper revisits that question with a novel dataset of over 11,000 sets of twins in the United States and information on colleges...

This paper investigates how individuals’ performances of a cognitive task in a high-pressure competition are affected by their peers’ performances. To do so, I use novel data from the National Spelling Bee, in which students attempt to spell words correctly in a tournament setting. Across...

This paper quantifies the extent of student-college “academic undermatch,” which occurs when a student's academic credentials permit them access to a college or university that is more selective than the postsecondary alternative they actually choose. Using a nationally representative...

Using a rich data set of all SAT test takers from the 2004 through 2008 high school graduation cohorts, we investigate the impact of state‐specific school age‐of‐entry laws on students’ pathways into and through college. We document that these laws do not impact the probability that a...

The relatively low degree completion rate of U.S. college students has prompted debate over the extent to which the problem is attributable to the students or to their choice of colleges.  Estimating the impact of initial college choice is confounded by the non-random nature of college...