Do College Admissions Counselors Discriminate? Evidence from a Correspondence-Based Field Experiment

Authors

Andrew Hanson, Marquette UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Publication Date

10-2017

Publisher

Elsevier

Source Publication

Economics of Education Review

Source ISSN

0272-7757

Abstract

I design and implement a correspondence based field experiment to test for race and gender discrimination among college admissions counselors in the student information gathering stage. The experiment uses names to identify student race and gender, and student grade, SAT score, and writing differences to reflect varying levels of applicant quality. I find that counselors do not respond differently by race in most cases, but there are measurable differences in response/non-response and in the type of correspondence sent that favor female students. I also find that the quality of the student induces large differences in the type of response.

Comments

Accepted version. Economics of Education Review, Vol. 60 (October 2017): 86-96. DOI. © 2017 Elsevier. Used with permission.

Recommended Citation

Hanson, Andrew, "Do College Admissions Counselors Discriminate? Evidence from a Correspondence-Based Field Experiment" (2017). Economics Faculty Research and Publications. 576.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/econ_fac/576