Despite being academically ready, many students fail to take a college entrance exam. In new research, George Bulman finds that this may be due in part to differing access to such exams from school to school and state to state. He finds that new testing centres are likely to increase SAT test taking rates by 4 percentage point for those students who live nearby. He writes that, especially for high ability students, increasing access to exams makes it is much more likely that they will continue on to, and complete, a four-year college education

Bulman, George

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blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/11/23/how-making-entrance-exams-more-accessible-can-increase-college-attendance/How making entrance exams more accessible can increasecollege attendanceDespite being academically ready, many students fail to take a college entrance exam. In newresearch, George Bulman finds that this may be due in part to differing access to such exams fromschool to school and state to state. He finds that new testing centres are likely to increase SAT testtaking rates by 4 percentage point for those students who live nearby. He writes that, especially forhigh ability students, increasing access to exams makes it is much more likely that they will continueon to, and complete, a four-year college education. A growing number of studies find that the decision to attend college may be shaped in large part byaccess to information about the application process and college options. For example, a non-trivial fraction ofstudents who appear academinally ready for college nonetheless fail to take the SAT or ACT – entrance exams thatare required for admission to most four-year colleges. Failure to take the exam could be due in part to a lack ofawareness about when and where to take them or to logistical barriers such as securing transportation to a testingcenter. In new research, I find that when these barriers are reduced and awareness is increased, it causes somestudents to take the exam, learn about their college options, and ultimately attend college. Thus improving access tocollege entrance exams is a potentially cost effective method of increasing investment in education relative totraditional approaches such as subsidizing tuition (for which federal and state governments spend tens of billions ofdollars annually).Nearly every four-year college in the United States requires applicants to take the SAT or ACT in order to beconsidered for admission. However, all high school students are not required to take the exam and, in practice, manydo not – including many who are likely to perform well based on their prior performance on standardized exams. Thisis shown in Figure 1, which compares the distribution of scores for students who take the SAT with the distribution ofscores that would occur if all students took it. The most notable aspect of this comparison is the many students in thetop half of the aptitude distribution nonetheless fail to take the exam (and thus may never be aware of their collegeoptions).Figure 1 – SAT Taking By Latent AbilityUnderstanding why some students do not take a college entrance exam is of great interesest to both academics andpolicymakers. To understand this phenomon, I note that there is significant variation in access to college entranceexams across students: some students attend school in districts or states where the exam if offered for free and canbe taken during a regular school day; other students attend high schools that act as testing centers where the examis offered on several Saturdays during the year; and, finally, some students must independently determine when andwhere the exam is offered and travel to a neighboring town to take it.Simply comparing the outcomes of students with varying levels of access in unlikely to generate credible results.Schools that make it easy for students to take the SAT may also have more capable teachers and counselors andserve segments of the population that are more inclined to attend college. To mitigate against this, I exploit theopening and closing of testing centers over time and the resulting change in access this generates for students athosting and neighboring schools, and compare between students who attended the same high school but in adjacentgraduating cohorts that differ in terms of whether or not there was easy access to a center. Likewise, I comparestudents in adjacent cohorts who graduate immediately before and after a district policy is adopted that makes theexams free to all students.A primary challenge in answering this question is the lack of a national database that tracks students from highschool to college in the United States. Thus the study merges administrative records from the College Board (whoadminister the SAT) with college enrollment records from the National Student Clearinghouse (who collect enrollmentdata directly from colleges). I also collected a new database of testing center locations which reveals when andwhere they open and close over time.New testing centers are found to increase SAT taking by about 4 percentage points (8 percent) for students attendingthe high school where it opens and 1.4 percentage points for students attending neighboring schools located within 5miles. Center closures have a corresponding decrease in SAT taking of about 2.3 percentage points (5 percent).Importantly, many new takers earn scores similar to their peers who take the exam regardless of their proximity to acenter. While the new takers do not perform as well as the average taker, many earn scores that could earn themadmission to selective four-year colleges. District policies, by design, dramatically increase the fraction of studentstaking the SAT, generating increases of about 31 percentage points. However, as a result of compelling morestudents to take the exam, the average scores of new takers are decidedly lower.The sudden increase in the fraction of students taking the SAT at specific schools makes it possible to examine theirsubsequent college outcomes. Approximately 40 percent of students who take the SAT as a result of a centeropening go on to attend a four-year college (generating a net increase in four-year college attendance of 1.6percentage points). It is worth noting that this is a smaller rate of enrollment than for a typical SAT taker. Only about10 percent students who take the exam as a result of a district policy attend a four-year college. The lower fraction ofnew takers who attend college under district policies is likely a function of the fact that many of these students mayhave had no interest in attending college in the first place and many earn relatively low scores.Of particular interest is determining which students, among the new takers, attend college. Inducing students withlow academic ability to attend college may not desirable – they may be unable to graduate with a degree and may besaddled with debt. However, the analysis suggests quite the opposite. About 65 percent of new takers from the topone-third of the aptitude distribution attend college relative to only 15 percent from the bottom of the distribution. Thisratio is tilted more in favor of high ability students than the average rates of attendance among all SAT takers. Thatis, positive selection is very strong among students induced to take the SAT through access to testing centers.Perhaps as a result, there is no evidence that these students are more likely to drop out of college than othermatriculates. The analysis of students who take the SAT as a result of district policies suggests a similar pattern. Lessthan 4 percent of new takers from the bottom third of the aptitude distribution are estimated to attend college, whilenearly 39 percent from the top of the distribution attend.Overall, the results suggest that some high ability students do not take the SAT because they are deterred by barriersto access such as identifying when and where to take the exam. When these students are induced to take the examand learn their options, many go on to attend a four-year college. Estimates of the typical income returns to collegefrom the literature combined with the estimates in this paper indicate that the lifetime return to taking the SAT formarginal takers from the bottom, middle, and top of the ability distribution is approximately $50,000, $125,000, and$200,000. Offering the exam at all schools, or requiring all students to take it, is likely to satisfy any cost-to-benefitanalysis.This article is based on the paper, ‘The Effect of Access to College Assessments on Enrollment and Attainment’ , inAmerican Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2015.Featured image credit: COCOEN daily photos (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting.        Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1N3RhBQ _________________________________About the authorGeorge Bulman – University of California at Santa CruzGeorge Bulman is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.His research focuses on public economics, particularly the economics of education. He earned hisPh.D. at Stanford University after working as a budget analyst for the federal government and as amathematics teacher with Teach For America.CC BY-NC 3.0 2015 LSE USAPP

How making entrance exams more accessible can increase college attendance

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