Misalignment between Test Scores and Colleges' Preferences: Chinese College Admission Reconsidered

Abstract

Each year, millions of high school graduates in China take a standardized test and compete for college seats. Unlike other countries, college admissions in China have a distinct feature: both test scores and colleges’ preferences coexist in the market. To alleviate the misalignment problem between test scores and colleges’ preferences, the government implements a so-called “dummy quota policy”. The Chinese parallel (CP) mechanism, based on this policy, is a variant of the serial dictatorship (SD) mechanism but has various drawbacks. In this paper, we consider two scenarios depending on whether the dummy quota policy is maintained or abandoned. For each scenario, we propose a modified parallel mechanism to improve the allocation outcome of the CP mechanism.