Cora Wang

Student Information Acquisition and Colleges' Incentives for Early Admissions (2025)

Abstract: This paper studies how student preference uncertainty and heterogeneity in school popularity shape elite colleges' choices between early-decision (ED) and regular-decision (RD) admissions. I develop a two-stage game in which two asymmetric schools first choose ED or RD policies and then set admission criteria, while students apply under ex ante uncertainty about which school they will ultimately prefer. I show that there always exists an equilibrium in which both schools adopt ED (ED--ED), whereas an equilibrium with both schools using RD (RD--RD) can be sustained only when student preference uncertainty is sufficiently large. I then embed the two-school game in a simple three-school market with heterogeneous popularity and show that a highly popular school may be forced to adopt ED as a global policy to defend itself against less popular rivals, even though RD--RD would be more efficient. The model provides a mechanism that helps rationalize recent attempts by extremely popular colleges to eliminate, and later reinstate, early admissions, including the shift toward non-binding but restrictive early-action programs.

[paper] [slides]