How do transparent admission standards affect students’ application to the college-bound upper-secondary school track?

Last registered on March 13, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
How do transparent admission standards affect students’ application to the college-bound upper-secondary school track?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011048
Initial registration date
March 06, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 13, 2023, 8:52 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Research Center for Educational and Network Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Social Sciences; TÁRKI Social Research Institute, Budapest

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2022-09-21
End date
2024-01-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
All education systems track students at least one point in their school career. Among these tracks, one (or more) typically leads to the tertiary (college) level, while another (or more) offers vocational qualifications. However, not all qualified students apply to the college-bound secondary track. A growing number of empirical studies show that a school’s admission standards might deter students from applying to schools that otherwise would accept them. The logic behind this is that schools’ (high) admission standards incorporate the risk of rejection—an adverse event that students want to avoid. In this research, we assume that students hold biased information about schools’ admission standards since schools’ exact admission standards are typically unknown to students due to the lack of official statistics. We further assume that correcting this information bias and informing qualified students about schools’ actual admission standards might motivate students to apply to college-bound secondary schools. Revealing schools’ admission standards is an easily scalable, low-cost intervention. Therefore, it is a good candidate for potential policy intervention.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Keller, Tamas. 2023. "How do transparent admission standards affect students’ application to the college-bound upper-secondary school track?." AEA RCT Registry. March 13. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11048-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Treated students received information about three nearby college-bound secondary schools into which their GPAs matched the best.
Intervention (Hidden)
It is explained in the attached detailed registration plan.
Intervention Start Date
2023-01-10
Intervention End Date
2023-02-14

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Application to a college-bound secondary school
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
All secondary outcomes are described in the detailed pre-registration plan. Secondary outcomes include, for example, the share of college-bound secondary schools among all applied secondary schools, the mismatch between the applied schools’ admission standards and students’ GPA, and the fear of rejection felt at the endline.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We executed a small, randomized field experiment among 402 8th-grade Hungarian students to influence their secondary-school track choice. We randomized students within the classroom at the individual level based on a value of a randomly generated number. One/six weeks before the official deadline to submit applications to secondary schools, we gave information to treated students (embedded into an online questionnaire) about three nearby college-bound secondary schools into which their GPAs matched the best. We hypothesize that the treatment increases students’ application to college-bound secondary schools. We will evaluate our hypotheses with classroom-fixed effect OLS models. The outcome variables will be available in December 2023.
Experimental Design Details
It is explained in the attached detailed registration plan.
Randomization Method
We randomized students within the classroom at the individual level based on a value of a randomly generated number
Randomization Unit
Students
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
402 students in 26 classrooms
Sample size: planned number of observations
402 students in 26 classrooms
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
402 students in 26 classrooms. N of treated students: 210. N of control students: 192
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Center of Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
IRB Approval Date
2021-11-05
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials