A comprehensive test on the effect of transparent admission standards on application to the college-bound upper-secondary school track

Last registered on March 08, 2022
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
A comprehensive test on the effect of transparent admission standards on application to the college-bound upper-secondary school track
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0009061
Initial registration date
March 07, 2022

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 08, 2022, 2:03 PM EST

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

Locations

Country
Hungary
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Tamas Keller
Affiliation
Research Center for Educational and Network Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Social Sciences; TÁRKI Social Research Institute, Budapest
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2021-11-01
End date
2022-09-30
Keywords
Education
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Not all qualified students apply to grammar school, the college-bound secondary school track, also called the grammar school track, where gifted students can effectively unfold their talent. The mismatch between the qualified students and the secondary school track dedicated for these students might be a consequence of meritocratic application regimes.

In meritocratic application regimes of selective educational systems, schools select students based on students’ prior achievement. Consequently, the fear of being refused from a school might deter students from applying to that school. This fear might intensify for applying schools at the grammar school track, the most selective secondary track with the highest admission standards. Schools’ admission standards –especially how students perceive it – might stand behind students’ fear of not being admitted.

Schools’ exact admission standards are unknown to students. Therefore, students might hold biased information about their subjective admission chances at a given school which could result in not to apply grammar schools. Correcting the information bias and informing qualified students about schools’ actual admission standards might increase the subjective admission chance of these qualified students, who in turn might apply to the grammar school track more likely.

We conduct a pair-matched, cluster-randomized field experiment in which we reveal schools’ actual admission standards to qualified students. We hypothesize that revealing to qualified students the schools’ last-year admission standards increases treated students’ application to grammar schools.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Keller, Tamas. 2022. "A comprehensive test on the effect of transparent admission standards on application to the college-bound upper-secondary school track." AEA RCT Registry. March 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9061-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We treat students with a 45-minute long online lecture that a qualified coach delivers to the target students. The lecture consists of two parts.
First, students watch a short movie directed by our team and containing the personal testimony of two students (a female and a male student) who, despite their grades, applied to grammar school. This part of the treatment aims to encourage students to apply to grammar school by observing similar students who applied to grammar school and are proud of this decision.
Second, the coach shows and explains to students a homepage that we prepared for the purpose of this study. The homepage communicates grammar schools’ admission standards in two respects: GPA and admission test. Data are obtained from the Hungarian Educational Authority.
Intervention Start Date
2022-01-01
Intervention End Date
2022-03-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Students’ secondary school application
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Students’ secondary school application marked as first on the application list [F]: This is a dummy variable that equals 1 if students submit their application to grammar school instead of the other two tracks (vocational and mixed tracks).

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Students’ endline application intention
The mismatch between schools’ admission standards and students’ GPA
Ranked application records
Perceived endline admission chance to grammar school
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Students’ endline application intention equals 1 if students are intended to apply to grammar school instead of the other two tracks (vocational and mixed tracks). We will ask this question only from 7th-grade students.

The mismatch between schools’ admission standards and students’ GPA is the difference between the particular student’s 7th-grade GPA and (minus) the applied secondary school’s admission standards (the 7th-grade GPA of those students admitted to that school in the last year). Positive values of mismatch variable mean that students apply to schools where their GPA is higher than the school’s admission standard; thus, students have a high chance of admission. Negative values of mismatch variable mean that students apply to schools where their GPA is lower than the school’s admission standard; thus, students have a low chance of admission. In short, the mismatch variable measures how much students apply to less competitive schools relative to their performance.

Ranked application records are the rank number of schools in students’ application list (8th grader), or the rank number of the schools students intend to apply (7th grade).

Perceived endline admission chance to grammar school is a survey question that asks all students to estimate their admission chance to the grammar school in general (unconditioned to actual application) by asking the following survey question: “Regardless of whether or not you will apply to grammar school, do you think you will be accepted?” The answer categories are on an 11-grade scale ranging from 0 (I will definitely not be accepted ) to 10 (I will definitely be accepted).

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The design divides students along two dimensions. First, whole classrooms were assigned to the treated or to the control conditions. Second, within all classrooms, we identified those students whose GPA is above 4.0—a GPA that, on average, is sufficient to successful admission to most grammar schools according to the administrative data. Only target students in treated classrooms will receive the treatment.
Experimental Design Details
The study employs different designs for 7th and 8th-grade students. This is because 8th-grade students cannot change their 7thgrade GPA since they have already earned these grades. Thus, revealing grammar schools’ admission standards to all 8th-graders might decrease applications to grammar schools among those students who are far away from the threshold. In particular, the treatment might exert an unintended negative effect for those whose 7th-grade GPA was below 4.0, which was the average 7th-grade GPA of admitted students in most grammar schools-

By contrast, the 7th-grade students have not yet earned their end-of-term grades. Thus, revealing grammar schools’ admission standards to 7th-grade students might motivate students to improve their grades, and therefore the unintended negative treatment effect might be less prevalent among them.

Experimental design in grade 7

Whole classrooms will be assigned to the treated and control conditions, and all students will be treated in the treated classrooms.

The 7th-grade students will receive follow-up treatment in grade 8, which design is detailed below.

Experimental design in grade 8

The design divides students along two dimensions. First, whole classrooms were assigned to the treated or to the control conditions. Second, within all classrooms, we identified those students whose GPA is above 4.0—a GPA that, on average, is sufficient to successful admission to most grammar schools according to the administrative data. Only target students in treated classrooms will receive the treatment.

Randomization Method
random number generator
Randomization Unit
classrooms
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
62 classrooms
40 classrooms are in grade 8
24 classrooms are in grade 7
Sample size: planned number of observations
7th grade (N=345) 8th grade (N=627)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
31 treated and 31 control classrooms
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The power is calculated for the primary analysis on the sample of 8th-grade students. The minimum detectable effect size is 0.29
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Centre for 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