Take Two! SAT Retaking and College Enrollment Gaps
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 12,
no. 2, May 2020
(pp. 115-58)
Abstract
Only half of SAT-takers retake the exam, with even lower retake rates among low-income students and underrepresented minority (URM) students. We exploit discontinuous jumps in retake probabilities at multiples of 100, driven by left-digit bias, to estimate retaking's causal effects. Retaking substantially improves SAT scores and increases four-year college enrollment rates, particularly for low-income and URM students. Eliminating disparities in retake rates could close up to 10 percent of the income-based gap and up to 7 percent of the race-based gap in four-year college enrollment rates of high school graduates.Citation
Goodman, Joshua, Oded Gurantz, and Jonathan Smith. 2020. "Take Two! SAT Retaking and College Enrollment Gaps." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 12 (2): 115-58. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170503Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I21 Analysis of Education
- I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions
- I24 Education and Inequality
- J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
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