We study a unique grading policy at a large US public university allowing students to mask their letter grades into a "Pass", after having observed their original grade. Using administrative transcript records, we find that female students are substantially less likely to mask their grades than...

In Fall 2014, Wellesley College began mandating pass/fail grading for courses taken by first-year, first-semester students, although instructors continued to record letter grades. We identify the causal effect of the policy on course choice and performance, using a...

We examine friendships and study partnerships among university students over several years. At the aggregate level, connections increase over time, but homophily on gender and ethnicity is relatively constant across time, university residences, and different network layers. At the individual...

There is debate over whether Asian American students are admitted to selective colleges and universities at lower rates than white students with similar academic qualifications. However, there have been few empirical investigations of this issue, in large part due to a dearth of data. Here we...

Decisions to invest in human capital depend on people's time preferences. We show that differences in patience are closely related to substantial subnational differences in educational achievement, leading to new perspectives on longstanding within-country disparities. We use social-media data -...

This paper compares the careers of Ivy League athletes to those of their non-athlete classmates. Combining team-level information on all Ivy League athletes from 1970 to 2021 with resume data for all Ivy League graduates, we examine both post-graduate education and career choices as well as...

We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framing...

In the four decades since 1980, US colleges and universities have seen the number of students from abroad quadruple. This rise in enrollment and degree attainment affects the global supply of highly educated workers, the flow of talent to the US labor market, and the financing of US higher...

We estimate a model of high school students' college choices, allowing for rich heterogeneity in students' preferences for college attributes. We use data on students' enrollment decisions and application decisions--i.e., the sets of colleges to which they applied--to identify the distribution...

Unique longitudinal probabilistic expectations data from the Berea Panel Study, which cover both the college and early post-college periods, are used to examine young adults' beliefs about their future incomes. We introduce a new measure of the ex post accuracy of beliefs, and two new approaches...