Working Papers
College Admission Concerns and Field ChoiceAbstract: This paper studies how college admission selectivity affects the college field choice of students in a centralized, field-specific admission system. I leverage a college admission policy reform in Ethiopia that sharply increased the share of college seats in public universities allocated to STEM fields. The reform substantially decreased the admission selectivity of STEM fields. Using cohort analysis and a regression discontinuity design, I show that students are significantly more likely to choose STEM fields after the reform. I find large heterogeneity in the choice response. The academically marginal students are substantially more likely to switch to STEM than infra-marginal students. The reform also induced positive selection on field-specific skills, where those who switch to STEM fields are relatively better in skills valued more in STEM fields than those who stay in the non-STEM fields. This sorting on field-specific skills resulted in a significant change in peer quality, consistent with the predictions of a Roy model in which STEM fields are valued more and the field-specific skills are positively correlated. Overall, while admission concerns drive field choices, students do not naively sort into less selective college fields. Instead, the choices are consistent with their relative position in the distribution of multi-dimensional skills. This suggests that students make more informed and rational choices than the existing literature suggests.