TY  - JOUR
AU  - Avery,Christopher
AU  - Levin,Jonathan D.
TI  - Early Admissions at Selective Colleges
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14844
PY  - 2009
Y2  - April 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14844
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14844.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christopher Avery
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-4063
Fax: 617/496-5960
E-Mail: christopher_avery@hks.harvard.edu

Jonathan D. Levin
Stanford University
Department of Economics
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA  94305-6072
Tel: 650/723-5962
E-Mail: jdlevin@stanford.edu
AB  - Early admissions is widely used by selective colleges and universities. We identify some basic facts about early admissions policies, including the admissions advantage enjoyed by early applicants and patterns in application behavior, and propose a game-theoretic model that matches these facts. The key feature of the model is that colleges want to admit students who are enthusiastic about attending, and early admissions programs give students an opportunity to signal this enthusiasm.
ER  -