Feedback for students
Improving college application outcomes through information policies
Feedback for students
Improving college application outcomes through information policies
Our experience with
feedback reports for students
Our experience in improving college application outcomes has been guided by a deep understanding of students' needs. Recognizing the critical role that information plays in student decision-making, we embarked on a multi-year collaboration with policymakers and education authorities to design interventions aimed at alleviating the informational frictions inherent in the college admissions process.
Based on national surveys and field experiments, we sought to equip students with personalized information that would enable them to make more informed decisions about their college and career choices.
Our project focuses on university admissions, with the goal of addressing the widespread problem of application errors that hinder students' access to their preferred universities and programs.
Through rigorous research and collaboration with the Chilean Ministry of Education and associate researchers, we have devised large-scale interventions to provide students with personalized information on program characteristics, admission probabilities, and alternative career recommendations. By addressing difficulties in information delivery, such as knowledge gaps, misjudgments, biased beliefs, and misunderstandings of the application process, we aim to improve students' decision-making and ultimately improve their outcomes in the college admissions process.
We have achieved important milestones through collaboration with education policy makers and stakeholders. Through the implementation of large-scale field experiments and interventions, we have succeeded in reducing application errors.
Increasing the probability of assignment of unmatched students by 20% and improving the assignment of unmatched students by 38%
In particular, our collaboration with the Chilean Ministry of Education led to the nationwide implementation of our information policy in 2023, resulting in a substantial decrease in unmatched and undermatched students and a significant increase in their monetary returns. These achievements underscore the effectiveness of information policies in mitigating application errors and reducing inequalities in college access.
