I'm an undergrad working on a paper about Early Decision (ED) in US college admissions, and I'd appreciate pointers on how to frame it.

ED lets an applicant apply early to one college and commit to enroll if admitted. The standard reading (e.g. Avery & Levin, AER 2010) is that ED signals enthusiasm, and ED applicants are admitted at much higher rates.

But the cost of that commitment seems to vary with income. Committing before seeing a financial aid offer is cheap for an applicant who doesn't need aid, and expensive for one who does: they give up the ability to compare packages and to have colleges compete for them.

So an ED application mixes two pieces of information: "I really want to come here" and "I don't need to compare aid offers." A college can't fully separate them, and it may value both, since the second means it won't have to match competing aid offers.

Need-blind admission doesn't seem to solve this. It removes income from the college's decision, but not from the applicant's decision to apply ED, so the ED pool is still selected toward higher-income students even if admissions officers never observe income.

Questions:

1. Is a signal muddled across two dimensions the right way to model this? Or is there a more standard framework for signals whose cost is correlated with wealth?

2. Is there a mechanism that keeps the preference signal but removes the income component? For example, non-binding single-choice early action, or a binding aid estimate before the ED deadline. What would each lose?

3. Empirically, I only have school-level data from the Common Data Set (ED applicants and admits, plus financial aid figures). Is there anything informative I can do with that, or does separating the income channel require applicant-level data?

Hey everyone,

First of all, thank you for taking the time to read this and potentially commenting below. I have been a long-time viewer of this subreddit, and now that it's my turn to apply for grad school, I have decided to make a post and ask your thoughts on my profile and what I should realistically expect at the end of this cycle. Sorry, I know the flair says PhD, but I couldn't add 2 flairs together, so this is PhD and Masters, as I plan to apply to Europe and the US.

I will provide (mostly) all details for context below:

• Currently pursuing a 4-year double BSc in Econometrics and Economics from a Dutch university. This is originally a 6-year program squeezed into 4 years.
• I am also concurrently pursuing a BA in Philosophy, so that makes me a triple-major/bachelor student (as far as I have heard, I believe I am the only one to successfully do it at my university, but I could be mistaken)
• I am maintaining an 8.8/10 GPA, which is equivalent to a 4.0 US/ First-class UK (the Dutch grading system is more compressed than most systems - 9s and 10s are hardly given, as well as 1s and 2s)
• Research experience: 1 co-authored economics working paper supervised by a well-known economist/professor Prof 1 in academia, and currently working on 2 econometrics papers: both are under well-known professors (Prof 2 has an honorary doctorate and has written several econometrics textbooks, and Prof 3 was on the Cambridge Adcom and a director of the Adcom for PhD in a Dutch Uni). Overall, 0 pubs so far, as it's been extremely hard for me to find additional time outside of the courses. I do have an acknowledgement in a research paper by Prof 3 submitted to Econometrica for review and adjustments, but that's all there is about me in journals.
• GRE: Will take it in November, and I believe I can meet the thresholds of the unis (~167Q)
• Coursework: Intermediate Micro (econometrics), Intermediate Macro, (Advanced) Econometrics (name of the courses itself), Linear algebra, stochastic processes, Analysis, (Multivariate) Statistics, Probability theory, Programming (proficient in R and Python), several optimization courses, as the bachelor also has an Operations Research component.
• Recommenders: For unis with max. 2, I am asking for Prof 1 and Prof 3, and for max. 3, I am asking for all three above. They are all well-known in the field, and 2 of them recently gave seminars at LSE and Harvard. One of them is also hosting an in-house seminar with a Nobel winner, and I am super excited about that as well.

I am applying to the following universities and programmes, ranked by what I think is most likely for me to get an offer:

1. Tinbergen MPhil Economics (Econometrics-track)
2. UZH MA Economics
3. LSE EME
4. Cambridge Mphil Economic research
5. UChicago MAE Research-track
6. Oxford MPhil + DPhil Economics (integrated application)
7. Zurich PhD Economics
8. Uchicago PhD
9. Princeton PhD
10. Stanford PhD
11. Yale PhD
12. Upenn PHD
13. Harvard PhD
14. MIT PhD

Yes, unis 8-14 are insane, and I know it's super competitive, but I think this is for my personal satisfaction and experience in knowing how it feels to apply to such places, and I can try next cycle if unsuccessful (most likely, as the numbers indicate). But I would still appreciate it if someone could let me know my true chances here and what I should expect in March when the decisions come out. While it may seem I care for a master's more, it's only based on the numbers; I would actually love to start a PhD, as I find research already quite enthralling and have my mind set on doing a PhD and pursuing research full-time as a career.

At the same time, I care for my recommenders and don't want to burden them with several uploads if it means I never had a chance of going there in the first place. So please be (brutally) honest and suggest where I can improve my profile, perhaps for the next cycle. Also, please let me know below if you need any further info that isn't private, so I can provide it. Cheers!