Grantee: Opportunity Insights
Study Type: QED
Principal Investigator: Raj Chetty – Harvard University
Project Description: This is a QED study that leverages multiple sources of data to understand inequities in admission to highly selective colleges and universities by family income. The researchers examined the effects of enrolling in a highly selective college on employment and earnings for families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. To achieve these objectives, the researchers assembled a dataset linking several sources of administrative data: 1) information from parents’ and students’ federal income tax records; 2) college attendance information from the Department of Education; 3) data from the College Board and ACT on standardized test scores; and 4) application and admissions records from several highly selective public and private colleges covering 2.4 million students. This dataset included longitudinal information on a set of pre-college characteristics (parental income, students’ SAT and ACT scores, high school grades, academic and non-academic credentials) as well as post-college outcomes (earnings, employers, occupations, graduate school attendance). Within this dataset, the researchers focused on the 12 Ivy-Plus colleges, 12 other highly selective private colleges, and highly selective state flagship public institutions. The study focused on the entering classes of 2010-15 when analyzing attendance patterns and included earlier cohorts when analyzing long-term post-college outcomes. The first part of the analysis focused on exploring how family income predicted admission to highly selective colleges—controlling for all confounding characteristics—and understanding why higher-income students garnered an admissions advantage. The second part of the study leveraged idiosyncratic variation in admissions decisions for waitlisted applicants to estimate the effect of attending a highly selective college on long-term earnings and employment outcomes. The researchers focused in particular on understanding how this pattern might have varied for students from the bottom of the income distribution.
Key Findings: Findings from the study revealed that Ivy-Plus colleges were more than twice as likely to admit a student from a high-income family as compared to low- or middle-income families with comparable SAT/ ACT scores. The researchers found that there were three factors explaining this disparity: preferences for children of alumni (legacies), higher non-academic ratings, and athletic recruitment. These three factors were not associated with better post-college outcomes; in contrast, SAT/ACT scores and academic ratings were highly predictive of post-college earnings and employment. Further analyses revealed that attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of a flagship public college tripled students’ chances of obtaining jobs at prestigious firms and substantially increased their chances of earning in the top one percent of earners.
Study Citation: Chetty, R., Deming. D., & Friedman, J. (2023). Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges. NBER Working Paper.
Full report here.
Working paper here.
The Key Findings above were reproduced from the published report and do not necessarily reflect interpretation of Overdeck Family Foundation staff.
