Ulric B. and Evelyn L. Bray Social Sciences Seminar

Abstract: Students are often advised to apply to a combination of "reach," "match," and "safety" schools. Empirically, following reductions in application costs, students expand the range of selectivity of schools to which they apply both upwards and downwards. These practices of diversification are difficult to reconcile with existing theoretical analyses of search decisions, which assume that schools' admission decisions are independent conditional on the student's information. I develop a framework that relaxes this assumption and generates these patterns. My framework shows that popular school-allocation mechanisms may generate segregation endogenously, as students with better outside options have stronger incentives to apply aggressively.

Professor Shorrer will be joined by guests Caterina Calsamiglia and Guillaume Haeringer.

How to view the seminar:
Sign up for a free twitch.tv account, and tune in on Wednesdays at noon pacific time on twitch.tv/caltechecontheory. You will be able to ask questions on the twitch chat.