Admission Lotteries Research Articles

Community colleges and careers: Evidence from nursing school lotteries

I estimate the effect of attending an associate degree in nursing program on nursing licensure. I use student-level academic data for all California community college students, matched to public records on all nursing licenses earned in the state. I produce causal estimates using random variation from admissions lotteries at a large nursing program. Enrolling in the program increases the probability of having an active nursing license by 59 percentage points within three years. By seven years the effect is smaller and not statistically significant. I estimate the value of a nursing license as approximately $5000-$6000 per year.

Heterogeneous effects of comprehensive vs. single-track academic schools: Evidence from admission lotteries

We use admission lotteries to study how enrollment in a single-track academic school instead of a comprehensive school affects achievement of students in Amsterdam. The two types of schools score differently on measures of school quality and enrollment in a single-track school instead of a comprehensive school implies exposure to better and richer peers. Yet, school resources and the school curriculum are very similar. Different groups of students are differentially affected by this treatment. Girls from lower-income neighborhoods benefit whereas boys from these neighborhoods are harmed. For students from higher-income neighborhoods, it does not matter which type of school they attend.

School's Out: How Summer Youth Employment Programs Impact Academic Outcomes

Abstract Recently there has been an emphasis on how time spent outside of the classroom can affect student outcomes, including high school graduation, with the hope of closing academic achievement gaps along socioeconomic and racial lines. This paper provides experimental evidence regarding a particular type of out-of-school activity—early work experience—on high school academic outcomes for low-income inner-city youth. Using randomized admissions lotteries for students who applied to the Boston Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), we estimate the effect of being selected to participate on academic outcomes as measured by administrative school records. We find that SYEP lottery winners are 4.4 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school on time and 2.5 percentage points less likely to drop out of high school during the four years after participating in the program relative to the control group. These improvements appear to be driven by better attendance and course performance in the year after being selected for the program, with the program's impact on attendance persisting into the second year. Survey data suggest that the Boston SYEP may affect academic outcomes by increasing aspirations to attend college, gaining basic work habits, and improving social skills during the summer.

Comprehensive Support and Student Success: Can Out of School Time Make a Difference?

Abstract StudentU is a comprehensive program that provides education, nutrition, and social support services to disadvantaged middle and high school students outside of the regular school day. In this paper I investigate the effects of this multiyear program on the early high school outcomes of participating students by exploiting data from oversubscribed admissions lotteries. I find that the subgroup of lottery winners who entered the comprehensive program with low baseline achievement earned more course credits (0.82 credits), achieved higher grade point averages (0.37 grade points), and were less likely to be suspended (17.1 percentage points) during ninth grade than their lottery loser counterparts. Investigation of intervening variables indicates that on-time grade progress and decreases in course failure and disciplinary infractions are potential mediating channels. Using an index of early high school outcomes, I predict that lottery winners are around 4 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school than lottery losers (5 percent effect). These results suggest that comprehensive services delivered outside of the regular school day have the potential to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged students.

Do Doctors Improve the Health Care of Their Parents? Evidence from Admission Lotteries

To assess the importance of unequal access to medical expertise and services, we estimate the causal effects of having a child who is a doctor on parents' mortality and health care use. We use data from parents of almost 22,000 participants in admission lotteries to medical school in the Netherlands. Our findings indicate that informal access to medical expertise and services is not an important cause of differences in health care use and mortality. (JEL H51, I11, I12, I14, I18)

The Roots of Health Inequality and the Value of Intrafamily Expertise

In the context of Sweden, we show that having a doctor in the family raises preventive health investments throughout the life cycle, improves physical health, and prolongs life. Two quasi-experimental research designs—medical school admission lotteries and variation in the timing of medical degrees—support a causal interpretation of these effects. A hypothetical policy that would bring the same health behavior changes and benefits to all Swedes would close 18 percent of the mortality-income gradient. Our results suggest that socioeconomic differences in exposure to health-related expertise may meaningfully contribute to health inequality. (JEL D15, G22, I12, I13, I14, I18)

The Impacts on College Enrollment of a Charter Network Serving Disadvantaged Students: Evidence From KIPP Middle School Lotteries

Recent studies of charter school effectiveness have questioned whether charter school networks can produce a lasting impact on students’ long-term outcomes. Our study is the first to examine this issue at the network of Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, which primarily serve disadvantaged students of color and constitute the nation’s largest charter school network. Using admission lotteries as a random assignment instrument, we estimate the impacts of 13 KIPP middle schools on college enrollment and persistence in college over the first two postsecondary years. Building on prior studies of KIPP that show KIPP middle schools have strong positive effects on middle school achievement, we find that KIPP middle schools also positively affect rates of enrollment in 4-year college programs. The magnitude of the estimated impact of a middle school admission offer (6.9%) and enrollment at a KIPP school (12.9%) is substantial relative to nationwide disparities in college enrollment across racial groups.

What If We Leave It Up to Chance? Admissions Lotteries and Equitable Access at Selective Colleges

Many prominent social scientists have advocated for random-draw lotteries as a solution to the “problem” of elite college admissions. They argue that lotteries will be fair, equitable, eliminate corruption, reduce student anxiety, restore democratic ideals, and end debates over race-conscious admissions. In response, we simulate potential lottery effects on student enrollment by race, gender, and income, using robust simulation methods and multiple minimum thresholds for grades and standardized tests. In the overwhelming majority of lottery simulations, the proportions of low-income students and students of color drop precipitously. With a GPA minimum, we find the proportion of men could drop as low as one third. Admissions lotteries with minimum bars for GPA and/or standardized tests do not appear to produce more equitable outcomes.

Field of study and partner choice

There is strong assortative mating by field of study. To examine to which extent this is due to self selection or to a causal effect of access to specific ”marriage markets”, we use data from participants in admission lotteries of four oversubscribed studies in the Netherlands. For each of the four studies, we find that the winning compliers of an admission lottery are significantly more likely than the losing compliers to have a partner from the lottery study, whereas losing compliers are only marginally more likely to have a partner from the lottery study than would occur under random matching. These results indicate that assortative mating by field of study is largely due to marriage market access and that self selection plays a minor role. JEL-codes: I26, J12, J13.

Can Successful Schools Replicate? Scaling Up Boston’s Charter School Sector

Can schools that boost student outcomes reproduce their success at new campuses? We study a policy reform that allowed effective charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to replicate their school models at new locations. Estimates based on randomized admission lotteries show that replication charter schools generate large achievement gains on par with those produced by their parent campuses. The average effectiveness of Boston’s charter middle school sector increased after the reform despite a doubling of charter market share. An exploration of mechanisms shows that Boston charter schools compress the distribution of teacher effectiveness and may reduce the returns to teacher experience, suggesting the highly standardized practices in place at charter schools may facilitate replicability. (JEL H75, I21, I28)

Early College, Continued Success: Longer-Term Impact of Early College High Schools

Following up on a previous impact study of Early Colleges (EC) based on retrospective admission lotteries, this study assessed longer-term impacts on students’ postsecondary outcomes with 4 more years of data. The study found that students who won EC admission lotteries were significantly more likely to enroll in college, enroll in 2-year colleges, complete a college degree, complete associate’s degrees or certificates, and complete bachelor’s degrees within 6 years after expected high school graduation than control students. Moreover, it found that treatment students completed postsecondary degrees earlier and faster than control students. Consistent with EC’s focus on college exposure during high school, the EC impacts on college enrollment and the completion of associate’s degrees largely occurred within high school. The study also found that EC impacts did not vary significantly by students’ demographic characteristics; however, some impacts were significantly stronger for students with higher levels of prior achievement.

Race-Blind Admissions, School Segregation, and Student Outcomes: Evidence from Race-Blind Magnet School Lotteries

We know surprisingly little about the influence of race-blind school admissions on student outcomes. This paper studies a unique reform where a large, urban school district was federally mandated to adopt a race-blind lottery system to fill seats in its oversubscribed magnet schools. The district had previously integrated its schools by conducting separate admissions lotteries for black and non-black students to offset the predominantly black applicant pools. The switch to race-blind lotteries dramatically segregated subsequent magnet school cohorts.I show that race-blind admissions caused the more segregated schools to enroll students with lower average baseline achievement and to employ lower value-added teachers due to sorting. I also find that segregation is further exacerbated by flight as white students transfer out of the district after attending more segregated schools. Ultimately, the mandated segregation decreases student standardized test scores and four-year college attendance. I provide suggestive evidence that the impact of racial segregation is partially mediated by changes to peer baseline achievement.

The Impacts of Neighborhood School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles' Zones of Choice

This paper evaluates the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program in Los Angeles, a school choice initiative that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left traditional attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We study the impacts of the ZOC program on student achievement and college enrollment using a matched difference-in-differences design that compares changes in outcomes for ZOC schools and demographically similar non-ZOC schools. Our findings reveal that the ZOC program boosted student outcomes markedly, closing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. These gains are explained by general improvements in school effectiveness rather than changes in student match quality, and school-specific gains are concentrated among the lowest-performing schools. We interpret these findings through the lens of a model of school demand in which schools exert costly effort to improve quality. The model allows us to measure the increase in competition facing each ZOC school based on household preferences and the spatial distribution of schools. We demonstrate that the effects of ZOC were larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel driving the impacts of ZOC. Demand estimates derived from rank-ordered preference lists suggest families place substantial weight on schools' academic quality, providing schools competitive incentives to improve their effectiveness. An analysis using randomized admission lotteries shows that the treatment effects of admission to preferred schools declined after the introduction of ZOC, a pattern that is explained by the relative improvements of less-preferred schools. Our findings demonstrate the potential for public school choice to improve student outcomes while also underscoring the importance of studying market-level impacts when evaluating school choice programs.

The Impact of Early Colleges on Students’ Postsecondary Education Trajectories: Can Early Colleges Overcome the (Supposedly) Diversionary Role of Community Colleges?

Following a sample of students who participated in admissions lotteries at eight Early College High Schools (ECs) partnering with 2-year colleges, this study examined the college enrollment and degree completion of students who won admissions lotteries and enrolled in ECs in Grade 9 (i.e., EC students), and assessed the EC impact—in terms of complier average causal effects—on students’ postsecondary education trajectories for up to 6 years after expected high school graduation (i.e., Year 10). The study found that by the end of Year 10, more than half (55.7%) of EC students had enrolled in 4-year colleges and more than a third (34.1%) had completed a bachelor’s degree. Among the subset EC students who had completed an associate degree or certificate during high school, 57.5% had completed a bachelor’s degree by the end of Year 10. Using an instrumental variable approach, our analyses of complier average causal effects revealed that compliers in the treatment group were significantly more likely than their counterparts in the control group to have enrolled in college each year during the 6 years after expected high school graduation and were significantly more likely to have completed a bachelor’s degree each year between 3 and 6 years after expected high school graduation. Taken together, these results demonstrate that rather than diverting students from pursuing 4-year degrees, ECs partnering with 2-year colleges not only improved students’ chance to successfully complete bachelor’s degrees, but also allowed them to do so on a shorter timeline.

Accepting randomness in medical school admissions: The case for a lottery

McMaster University’s medical school, faced with the need to socially distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, recently replaced their structured admission interview process with a partial lottery. At first, it may seem that leaving medical school admissions partly to chance could erode autonomy and meritocracy. Yet our current system for selecting medical students is strained by a limited predictive ability. In the search for good doctors, we lack meaningful, quantifiable, and comparable criteria. Partial or weighted admissions lotteries can offer us an escape. They have the potential to reduce mental and financial burdens on both applicants and medical schools, avoiding an overemphasis on marginal differences between applicants. Lotteries are also a simple way to address persistent admissions disparities by being truly non-discriminatory. At the very least, lotteries represent a useful benchmark against which we can rigorously compare current and future selection methods.

The Returns to a Large Community College Program: Evidence from Admissions Lotteries

This paper estimates the labor market returns to the associate’s degree in nursing (ADN), which is one of the most popular community college programs. I use student-level academic and earnings records across two decades for all community college students in California. I leverage random variation from admissions lotteries to produce causal estimates of the effect of the ADN on earnings and employment at a single large ADN program. Enrolling in the program increases earnings by 44 percent and the probability of working in the health care industry by 19 percentage points. These estimates are similar to ones in models that do not use the lottery variation but do control for individual fixed effects and individual-specific linear time trends, which I also estimate in a wider set of institutions where lottery estimates are not possible. In light of concerns about nursing shortages, I estimate that the economic benefit of expanding an ADN program by one seat far outweighs the costs. (JEL D44, I11, I23, I26, J24, J31)

Who Benefits from Job Training Programs? Evidence from a High-Dosage Program in Brazil

Using admission lotteries and registry data linking labor market outcomes, we study the effect of a vocational training program focused on disadvantaged individuals in Brazil. The intensive program is an 18-month classroom training coupled with a 6-month on-the-job training provided by government-sponsored training centers. When assessing the impacts on 15,000 winners and 200,000 nonwinners who graduated in different business cycle moments, we show that female students fare better than their male counterparts. Results are driven by courses in services and those located in faster-growing local labor markets. Investigating outcomes beyond employment and earnings, we do not find an impact on entrepreneurship or university admission.

Using Admission Lotteries to Estimate Heterogeneous Effects of Elite Schools

This paper studies the effects of enrollment in an elite school on students’ achievement. We use that elite schools in Amsterdam are often oversubscribed and admission is based on lotteries. Our results show that elite schools have negative effects on achievement of students who just qualify for the highest academic track and positive effects on achievement of students from the top of the baseline ability distribution. These results reconcile contrasting findings from previous studies that use regression discontinuity designs. We also find that value-added estimates of the effects of elite schools are severely biased.

Identification of School Admission Effects Using Propensity Scores Based on a Matching Market Structure

A large literature estimates various school admission and graduation effects by employing variation in student admission scores around schools’ admission cutoffs, assuming (quasi-) random school assignment close to the cutoffs. In this paper, I present evidence suggesting that the samples corresponding to typical applications of the regression discontinuity design (RDD) fail to satisfy these assumptions. I distinguish ex-post randomization (as in admission lotteries applicable to those at the margin of admission) from ex-ante randomization, reflecting uncertainty about the market structure of applicants, which can be naturally quantified by resampling from the applicant population. Using data from the Croatian centralized college admission system, I show that these ex-ante admission probabilities differ dramatically between treated and non-treated students within typical RDD bandwidths. Such unbalanced admission probability distributions suggest that bandwidths (and sample sizes) should be drastically reduced to avoid selection bias. I also show that a sizeable fraction of quasi-randomized assignments occur outside of the typical RDD bandwidths, suggesting that these are also inefficient. As an alternative, I propose a new estimator, the Propensity Score Discontinuity Design (PSDD), based on all observations with random assignments, which compares outcomes of applicants matched on ex-ante admission probabilities, conditional on admission scores.

The Roots of Health Inequality and The Value of Intra-Family Expertise

Mounting evidence documents a stark correlation between income and health, yet the causal mechanisms behind this gradient are poorly understood. This paper examines the impact of access to expertise on health, and whether unequal access to expertise contributes to the health-income gradient. Our empirical setting, Sweden, allows us to shut down inequality in formal access to health care; we first document that strong socioeconomic gradients nonetheless persist. Second, we study the effect of access to health-related expertise -- captured by the presence of a health professional in the extended family -- on health. Exploiting admissions lotteries into medical schools and variation in the timing of degrees, we show that access to intra-family medical expertise has far-reaching health consequences, at all ages: It raises longevity, improves drug adherence and reduces the occurrence of lifestyle-related disease in adulthood, raises vaccination rates in adolescence, and reduces tobacco exposure in utero. Third, we show that the effects of expertise are larger at the lower end of the income distribution -- precisely where access to expertise is scarcer. Unequal access to health-related expertise can account for as much as 18% of the health-SES gradient, and may thus play a significant role in sustaining health inequality.