Marginal Effects of Merit Aid for Low-Income Students

This study was carried out under data-use agreements between MIT and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and between MIT and Nebraska's public colleges and universities. We are grateful to Sally Hudson for her contributions to this project. Nick Gebbia, Raymond Han, Kenya Heard, Anran Li, and Julia Turner provided outstanding research assistance. Enrico Cantoni, Sydnee Caldwell, Brandon Enriquez, Tyler Hoppenfeld, Sookyo Jeong, Olivia Kim, Brendan Malone, Kemi Oyewole, Karen Scott, and Carolyn Stein were instrumental in the project's early stages. Our thanks also go to Eryn Heying and Anna Vallee for invaluable administrative support, and to the staff of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation for their expert assistance in implementing the evaluation. We thank the Provost's Office at the University of Nebraska, the Nebraska State College System, and Nebraska's community colleges for their support for this effort and for sharing their data. Raj Chetty, Amy Finkelstein, Nathan Hendren, Lisa Kahn, Lawrence Katz, Danielle Li and seminar participants at AASLE, Amazon, Brookings, Boston University, Carleton College, Dartmouth, Harvard, IIES, JPAL, MIT, NBER Summer Institute, Northwestern, Princeton, UC Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Melbourne, University of Michigan, and Yale made many helpful comments and suggestions. We acknowledge financial support from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and the MIT SEII seed fund. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research or the views of institutional study partners.

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