![Journal of Political Economy, accepted Journal Cover](/research-files/images/journal_covers/jope.png)
Bhattacharya, D. and Shvets, J.
Inferring Trade-Offs in University Admissions: Evidence from Cambridge
Journal of Political Economy, accepted
(2024)
Abstract: How do elite universities balance diversity and academics during admissions, and do they face a trade-off in doing so? We develop a theory-based empirical framework to identify and quantify this potential trade-off ex-post, using post-entry outcomes. We apply our framework to admission and exam-performance data from Cambridge University. Comparing directly admitted students and second-round admits from different demographic groups yields bounds on the magnitude of trade-off, which (A) hold irrespective of whether we observe all applicant characteristics, and (B) require no information on rejected applicants. We find robust evidence of a trade-off between gender balance and performance in math-intensive subjects. It implies a weight of at least 20% on gender-diversity and at most 80% on academics in the university objective. Such trade-offs are not identified for state vis-a-vis privately-funded school students, nor for gender in equally competitive non-mathematical disciplines.
Keywords: University Admission, Affirmative action, Diversity-performance trade-off, Expost Evaluation, Marginal Admits, Waitlist Admission
JEL Codes: D61, J71, I23, I24
Author links: Debopam Bhattacharya Julia Shvets
Publisher's Link: https://doi.org/10.1086/730544