Test-Optional Admissions

时间：12月1日（周四）10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

地点：ZOOM会议（发送邮件至hyyang@nsd.pku.edu.cn 获取线上会议号和密码）

主讲人：Alexander Frankel (Professor, University of Chicago)

主持老师：吴泽南，石凡奇（经院）；胡岠（国发院）

参与老师：胡涛，吴泽南，石凡奇（经院）；汪浩，胡岠（国发院）；翁翕（光华）

摘要：The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend of many colleges moving to test-optional, and in some cases test-blind, admissions policies. A frequent claim is that not requiring standardized test scores allows a college to increase the diversity of its student body. This argument is unsatisfying: how can a college make better decisions with less information? Our paper instead argues that test-optional policies may be driven by social pressure on colleges’ admission decisions. We show that, when social pressure is important, a college can use a test-optional policy to reduce its “disagreement cost” with society and obtain a student pool the college prefers. We discuss which students either benefit from or are harmed by a test-optional policy. In an application, we study how a ban on using race in admissions may result in more colleges going test optional or test blind.

主讲人介绍：Alex Frankel is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is a micro-economic theorist whose work focuses on information economics. Prior to working at the University of Chicago, he received his PhD from Stanford GSB.