Students’ Preferences, Capacity Constraints and Post-Secondary Achievements in a Non-Selective System

Using rich administrative data on the French centralized assignment system of admission in higher education Admission Post Bac (APB) paired with data on university enrollment, this article provides new evidence on the impact of satisfying students’ stated preferences on their achievements in higher education. To do so, we exploit lotteries embedded in APB to prioritize applicants in oversubscribed university programs as an instrument for admission. Focusing on cohorts 2013 to 2016, we show that admission to one’s top-ranked program has a large impact on the pursuit of post-secondary education: on average, it increases students’ chances of enrollment into higher education by 10% from the baseline. It also affects other aspects of students’ educational pathways such as persistence in higher education, choice of major and degree completion. Effects are heterogeneous both by programs’ field of study and applicants’ profile. In particular, students at the margin of pursuing higher education are more sensitive to capacity constraints in their favorite program.