The Wisconsin Guarantee: A Top Percent Policy's Impact on Flagship Access

• In Event: Uncertainty in Higher Education: Admission, Aid, and Costs

Abstract

Existing evidence shows that top percent policies for college admission have only a modest impact on high school to flagship enrollment patterns. It is unclear whether these policies fail to induce new applications, fail to alter admissions decisions, or both. This paper studies the effects of Wisconsin's new top percent policy at the state flagship, UW–Madison, where students in the top five percent of their high school class are now guaranteed admission. Using a difference-in-differences design comparing Wisconsin and Minnesota high school graduates, I find that the policy increased the probability a student from Wisconsin applied to UW–Madison by only 0.4 percentage points, equivalent to roughly 240 additional applications annually. Students also respond to the policy's early action requirement by shifting when they submit applications. I then estimate whether guarantee-eligible applicants would have been admitted under the university's preexisting admissions process and predict that 95 percent would have likely been admitted without the guarantee. I find little change in the distribution of UW–Madison's in-state freshmen enrolling from the state's various high schools. My findings provide evidence that top percent policies may not meaningfully change enrollment patterns when they have limited impact on students' application choices and when guarantee-eligible applicants would have likely otherwise been admitted. This highlights a limitation of admission guarantees alone and suggests that efforts to change enrollment patterns may also need to target students’ application choices.

Author

• Heather Kain Little, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author